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Copyright fi?_ 


n 


COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT, 


















THE CAMERONS 
OF HIGHBORO 




I 















































































How good bacon tasted when you broiled it yourself on a 
forked stick 


THE CAMERONS 
OF HIGHBORO 


BY 


BETH B. GILCHRIST 

Author of “Cinderella’s Granddaughter,’’ etc. 


ILLUSTRATED BY 
PHILLIPPS WARD 



NEW YORK 
THE CENTURY CO. 
1919 




<£'* 


Copyright, 1919, by 
The Century Co. 


Published, September, 1919 


• i 

otr i6-fy‘iy 

©CI.A529854 


-t> r 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I Elliott Plans and Fate Dis- 
poses 3 

II The End of a Journey ... 25 

III Cameron Farm 39 

IV In Untrodden Fields ... 65 

V A Slacker Unperceived . . 93 

VI Fliers 122 

VII Picnicking 148 

VIII A Bee Sting 173 

IX Elliott Acts on an Idea . .199 

X What’s in a Dress? .... 224 


XI Missing 245 

XII Home-Loving Hearts . . . 266 






































LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


How good bacon tasted when you broiled 
it yourself on a forked stick . Frontispiece 


FACING 

PAGE 


Laura took the new cousin up to her room 28 


Cutting the wiry brown stems in the fern- 
filled glade 142 


Tm getting dinner all by myself” . 


. 200 














THE CAMERONS 
OF HIGHBORO 






* 








1 






































THE CAMERONS 
OF HIGHBORO 


CHAPTER I 

ELLIOTT PLANS AND FATE DISPOSES 

N OW and then the accustomed world 
turns a somersault; one day it faces 
you with familiar features, the next it 
wears a quite unrecognizable countenance. 
The experience is, of course, nothing new, 
though it is to be doubted whether it was 
ever staged so dramatically and on so vast 
a scale as during the past four years. 
And no one to whom it happens is ever the 
same afterward. 

Elliott Cameron was not a refugee. 
She did not trudge Flemish roads with the 
pitiful salvage of her fortunes on her 
back, nor was she turned out of a cottage 
3 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


in Poland with only a sackful of her house- 
hold treasures. Nevertheless, American 
girl though she was, she had to be evacu- 
ated from her house of life, the house she 
had been building through sixteen petted, 
autocratic years. This is the story of that 
evacuation. 

It was made, for all the world, like any 
Pole’s or Serbian’s or Belgian’s; material 
valuables she let pass with glorious care- 
lessness, as they left the silver spoons in 
order to salvage some sentimental trifle 
like a baby-shoe or old love-letters. El- 
liott took the closing of her home as she 
had taken the disposal of the big car, 
cheerfully enough, but she could not leave 
behind some absurd little tricks of thought 
that she had always indulged in. She was 
as strange to the road as any Picardy peas- 
ant and as bewildered, with — shall I say 
it ? — considerably less pluck and spirit than 
some of them, when the landmarks she had 
lived by were swept away. But they, you 
4 


ELLIOTT PLANS 

see, had a dim notion of what was happen- 
ing to them. Elliott had none. She 
did n’t even know that she was being evac- 
uated. She knew only that ways which 
had always worked before had mysteri- 
ously ceased working, that prejudices and 
preoccupations and habits of mind and ac- 
tion, which she had spent her life in ac- 
cumulating, she must now say good-by to, 
and that the war, instead of being across 
the sea, a thing one’s friends and cousins 
sailed away to, had unaccountably got 
right into America itself and was interfer- 
ing to an unreasonable extent in affairs 
that were none of its business. 

Father came home one night from a 
week’s absence and said, as he unfolded 
his napkin, “Well, chicken, I ’m going to 
France.” 

They were alone at dinner. Miss Rey- 
nolds, the housekeeper, was dining out 
with friends, as she sometimes did; nights 
that, though they both liked Miss Rey- 
5 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


nolds, father and daughter checked with a 
red mark. 

“To France ?” A little thrill pricked 
the girl’s spine as she questioned. “Is it 
Red Cross?” 

“Not this time. An investigation for 
the government. It may, probably will, 
take months. The government wants a 
thorough job done. Uncle Samuel thinks 
your ancient parent competent to hold up 
one end of the thing.” 

“Stop!” Elliott’s soft order commam 
deered all her dimples. 

“I won’t have you maligning my fa- 
ther, you naughty man ! Ancient parent, 
indeed! That’s splendid, isn’t it?” 

“I rather like it. I was hoping it would 
strike you the same way.” 

“When do you go ?” 

“As soon as I can get my affairs in 
shape — I could leave to-morrow, if I had 
to. Probably I shall be off in a week or 
ten days.” 


6 


ELLIOTT PLANS 


“I suppose the government didn’t say 
anything about my investigating some- 
thing, too?” 

“Now you mention it, I do not recol- 
lect that the subject came up.” 

She shook her head reprovingly. “That 
was an omission ! However, I think I ’ll 
go as your secretary.” 

Mr. Cameron smiled across the table. 
How pretty she was, how daintily arch 
in her sweetness ! “That arrangement 
would be entirely satisfactory to me, my 
dear, but I am not taking a secretary. I 
shall get one over there, when I need one.” 

“But what can I go as?” pursued the 
girl. “I ’d like to go as something.” 

Heavens ! she looked as though she 
meant it! “I ’m afraid you can’t go, Lot, 
this time.” 

She lifted cajoling eyes. “But I want 
to. Oh, I know! I can go to school in 
Paris.” 

Her little air of having settled the mat- 

7 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


ter left him smiling but serious. “France 
has mouths enough to feed without one ex- 
tra school-girl’s, chicken.’’ 

“I don’t eat much. Are you afraid of 
submarines ?” 

“For you, yes.” 

“I ’m not. Daddies dear, may n't I go? 
I ’d love to be near you.” 

“Positively, my love, you may not.” 

She drew down the corners of her mouth 
and went through a bewitching imitation 
of wiping tears out of her eyes. But she 
was n’t really disappointed. She had been 
fairly certain in advance of what the ver- 
dict would be. There had been a bare 
chance, of something different — that was 
all, and it did n’t pay to let chances, even 
the barest, go by default. So she crum- 
bled her warbread and remarked thought- 
fully, “I suppose I can stay at home, but it 
won’t be very exciting.” 

Her father seemed to find his next words 
hard to say. “I had a notion we might 
8 


ELLIOTT PLANS 

close the house. It is rather expensive to 
keep up; not much point in doing so just 
for one, is there? In going to France I 
shall give my services.” 

“Of course. But the house — ” The 
delicate brows lifted. “What were you 
thinking of doing with me?” 

“Dumping you on the corner. What 
else?” The two laughed together as at a 
good joke. But there was a tightening in 
the man's throat. He wondered how 
soon, after next week, he would again be 
sitting at table opposite that vivacious 
young face. 

“Seriously, Lot, I met Bob in Washing- 
ton. He was there on conservation busi- 
ness. When he heard what I was con- 
templating, he asked you up to Highboro. 
Said Jessica and he would be delighted to 
have you visit them for a year. They 're 
generous souls. It struck me as a good 
plan. Your uncle is a fine man, and I have 
always admired his wife. I 've never seen 
9 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


as much of her as I ’d have liked. What 
do you say to the idea?” 

“Um-m-m.” Elliott did not commit 
herself. “Uncle Bob and Aunt Jessica are 
very nice, but I don’t know them.” 

“House full of boys and girls. You 
won’t be lonely.” 

The piquant nose wrinkled mischiev- 
ously. “That would never do. I like my 
own way too well.” 

He laughed. “And you generally man- 
age to get it by hook or by crook !” 

“I? You malign me. You give it to 
me because you like me.” 

How adorably pretty she looked! 

He laughed again. “You ’ve got your 
old dad there, all right. Yes, yes, you ’ve 
got him there!” 

“Didn’t I tell you just now that you 
must n’t call my father old?” 

“So you did! So you did! Well, well, 
the truth will out now and then, you know. 
Could you inveigle Jane into giving us 
io 


ELLIOTT PLANS 


more butter ? — -By the way, here ’s a let- 
ter from Jessica. I found it in the stack 
on my desk to-night. Better read it be- 
fore you say no.” 

“Oh, I will,” Elliott received the letter 
without enthusiasm. “Very good of her, 
I ’m sure. I ’ll write and thank her to- 
morrow ; but I think I ’ll go to Aunt 
Nell’s.” 

“Just as you say. You know Elinor 
better. But I rather incline to Bob and 
Jess. There is something to be said for 
variety, Lot.” 

“Yes, but a year is so long. Why, Fa- 
ther Cameron, a year is three hundred and 
sixty-five whole days long and I don’t know 
how many hours and minutes and — and 
seconds. The seconds are awful! Dad- 
dies darling, I never could support life 
away from you in a perfectly strange 
family for all those interminable sec- 
onds !” 

“Your own cousins, chicken; and they 
ii 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


would n’t seem strange long. I ’ve a no- 
tion they ’d help make time hustle. Better 
read the letter. It ’s a good letter.” 

“I will — when I don’t have you to talk 
to. What ’s the matter ?” 

“Bless me, I forgot to tell Miss Rey- 
nolds! Nell’s coming to-night. Wired 
half an hour ago.” 

“Aunt Nell? Oh, jolly!” The slender 
hands clapped in joyful pantomime. “But 
don’t worry about Miss Reynolds. / will 
tell Anna to make a room ready. Now we 
can settle things talking. It ’s so much 
more satisfactory than writing.” 

The man laughed. “Can’t say no, so 
easily, eh, chicken?” 

She joined in his laugh. “There is 
something in that, of course, but it is n’t 
very polite of you to insinuate that any 
one would wish to say no to me.” 

“I stand corrected of an error in tact. 
No, I can’t quite see Elinor turning you 
down.” 


12 


ELLIOTT PLANS 


That was the joy of these two ; they were 
such boon companions, like brother and sis- 
ter together instead of father and daugh- 
ter. 

But now Elliott, too, remembered some- 
thing. “Oh, Father ! Quincy has scarlet 
fever !” 

“Scarlet fever? When did he come 
down ?” 

“Just to-day. They suspected it yester- 
day, and Stannard came over to Phil 
Tracy’s. To-day the doctor made sure. 
So Maude and Grace are going right on 
from the wedding to that Western ranch 
where they were invited. All their outfits 
are in the house here, but they will get new 
ones in New York.” 

“Where’s James?” 

“Uncle James went to the hotel, and 
Aunt Margaret, of course, is quarantined. 
Quincy is n’t very sick. They ’ve post- 
poned all their house-parties for two 
months.” 


13 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

“H’m. Where do they think the boy 
caught it ?” 

“Not an idea. He came home from 
school Thursday.” 

“Well, Cedarville will be minus Camer- 
ons for a while, won’t it?” 

“It certainly will. Both houses closed 
— or Uncle James’s virtually so. Do you 
know what Aunt Nell is coming for?” 

“Not the ghost of a notion. Perhaps 
she is going to adopt a dozen young Bel- 
gians and wants me to draw up the pa- 
pers.” 

“Mercy! I hope not a whole dozen, if 
I am to stay at Clover Hill with her. Half 
a dozen would be enough.” 

“Want you at Clover Hill?” said Aunt 
Elinor, when the first greetings were over 
and she had heard the news. “Why, you 
dear child, of course I do! Or rather I 
should, if I were to be there myself. But 
I ’m going to France, too.” 

“To France!” 


14 


ELLIOTT PLANS 

“Red Cross,” with an enthusiastic nod 
of the perfectly dressed head. “Lou Em- 
ery and I are going over. That ’s what 
I stopped off to tell you people. Ran down 
to New York to see about my papers. It ’s 
all settled. We sail next week. Now 
I ’m hurrying back to shut up Clover Hill. 
Then for something worth while ! Do you 
know,” the fine eyes turned from contem- 
plation of a great mass of pink roses on 
the table, “I feel as though I were on the 
point of beginning to live at last. All my 
days I have spent dashing about madly in 
search of a good time. Now — well, now 
I shall go where I ’m sent, live for weeks, 
maybe, without a bath, sleep in my clothes 
in any old place, when I sleep at all; but 
I ’m crazy, simply crazy to get over there 
and begin.” 

It was then that Elliott began dimly to 
sense a predicament. Even then she 
did n’t recognize it for an impasse . Such 
things did n’t happen to Elliott Cameron. 
15 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

But she did wish that Quincy had selected 
another time for isolating her Uncle 
James’s house. Not that she particularly 
desired to spend a year, or a fraction of a 
year, with the James Camerons, but they 
were preferable to her Uncle Robert’s 
family, on the principle that ills you know 
and understand make a safer venture than 
a jump in the dark. Nothing radical was 
wrong with the Robert Camerons except 
that they were dark horses. They lived 
farther away than the other Camerons, 
which would n’t have mattered — geog- 
raphy seldom bothered a Cameron — if 
they had n’t chosen to let it. On second 
thoughts, perhaps that, however, was ex- 
actly what did matter. Elliott understood 
that the Robert Camerons were poor. 
More than once she had heard her father 
say he feared “Bob was hard up.” But 
Bob was as proud as he was hard up; El- 
liott knew that Father had never succeeded 
in lending him any money. 

16 


ELLIOTT PLANS 

She let these things pass through her 
mind as she reviewed the situation. Proud 
and independent and poor — those were 
worthy qualities, but they did not make 
any family interesting. They were more 
apt, Elliott thought, to make it uninterest- 
ing. No, the Robert Camerons were out 
of the question, kindly though they might 
be. If she must spend a year outside her 
own home, away from her father-comrade, 
she preferred to spend it with her own sort. 

There is this to be said for Elliott Cam- 
eron; she had no mother, had had no 
mother since she could remember. The 
mother Elliott could not remember had 
been a very lovely person, and as broad- 
minded as she was charming. Elliott had 
her mother’s charm, a personal magnetism 
that twined people around her little finger, 
but she was essentially narrow-minded. 
With Elliott it was a matter of upbringing, 
of coming-up rather, since within some- 
what wide limits her upbringing had, after 
17 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


all, been largely in her own hands. Henry 
Cameron had had neither the heart nor the 
will to thwart his only child. 

Before she went to bed, Elliott, curled 
up on her window-seat, read Aunt Jessica’s 
letter. It was a good letter, a delightful 
letter, and more than that. If she had 
been older, she might, just from reading it, 
have seen why her father wanted her to 
go to Highboro. As it was, something 
tugged at her heartstrings for a moment, 
but only for a moment. Then she swung 
her foot over the edge of the window-seat 
and disposed of the situation, as she had al- 
way disposed of situations, to her liking. 
She had no notion that the Fates this time 
were against her. 

The next day her cousin Stannard Cam- 
eron came over. Stannard was a long, 
lazy youth, with a notion that what he did 
or did n’t do was a matter of some impor- 
tance to the universe. All the Camerons 
were inclined to that supposition, all but 
18 


ELLIOTT PLANS 


the Robert Camerons ; and we don’t know 
about them yet. 

“So they ’re going to ship me up into the 
wilds of Vermont to Uncle Bob’s,” he 
ended his tale of woe. “They ’ll be long 
on the soil, and all that rot. Have a farm, 
have n’t they?” 

“I was invited up there, too,” said El- 
liott. 

“You!” An instant change became vis- 
ible in the melancholy countenance. “Go- 
ing?” 

“No, I think not.” 

“Oh, come on! Be a sport. We’d 
have fun together.” 

“I ’ll be a sport, but not that kind.” 

“Guess again, Elliott. You and I could 
paint the place red, whatever kind of a 
shack it is they ’ve got.” 

“Stannard,” said the girl, “you ’re ter- 
ribly young. If you think I ’d go any- 
where with you and put up any kind of a 
game on our cousins — cousins , Stan — ” 

19 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


'There are cousins and cousins.” 

She shook her head. "No wilds in 
mine. When do you start?” 

"To-morrow, worse luck! What are 
you going to do?” 

She smiled tantalizingly. "I have made 
plans.” True, she had made plans. The 
fact that the second party to the transac- 
tion was not yet aware of their existence 
did not alter the fact that she had made 
them. Then she devoted herself to the de- 
spondent Stannard, and sent him away 
cheered almost to the point of thinking, 
when he left the house, that Vermont was 
not quite off the map. 

Not so Elizabeth Royce. Bess knew 
precisely what was on the map, and had 
Vermont been there, she would have no- 
ticed it. There was not much, Miss Royce 
secretly flattered herself, that escaped her. 
She had heard of Mr. Robert Cameron; 
but whether he resided in Kamchatka or 
Timbuctoo she could not have told you. 
20 


ELLIOTT PLANS 

Mr. Robert Cameron, she had adduced 
with an acumen beyond her years, was 
the unsuccessful member of a highly suc- 
cessful family. And now Elliott, ador- 
able Elliott, was to be marooned in this un- 
charted district for a whole year. It was 
unthinkable ! 

"But, Elliott darling, you ’d die in Ver- 
mont !” 

"Oh, no!” said Elliott; " I don’t think 
I should find it pleasant, but I should n’t 
die.” 

"Pleasant !” sniffed Miss Royce. "I 
should say not.” 

"It is rather far away from everybody. 
Think of not seeing you for a year, Bess !” 

"I don’t want to think of it. What ’s 
the matter with your Uncle James’s house 
when the quarantine ’s lifted?” 

"Nothing. But it has only just been put 
on.” 

"And the tournament next week. You 
can't miss that ! Oh, Elliott !” 


21 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


“I think,” remarked Elliott pensively, 
“there ought to be a home opened for girls 
whose fathers are in France.” 

“Why,” asked Bess, gripped by a great 
idea, “why should n’t you come to us while 
your uncle’s house is quarantined?” 

Why not, indeed? Elliott thought Bess 
a little slow in arriving at so obvious and 
satisfactory a solution of the whole diffi- 
culty, but she was properly reluctant about 
accepting in haste. “Would n’t that be 
too much trouble? Of course, it would be 
perfectly lovely for me, but what would 
your mother say?” 

“Mother will love to have you !” Miss 
Royce spoke with conviction. 

They spent the rest of the afternoon 
making plans and Elizabeth went home 
walking on air. 

But Mother, alas! proved a stumbling- 
block. “That would be very nice,” she 
said, “very nice indeed; but Elliott Cam- 
eron has plenty of relatives. They will 


22 


ELLIOTT PLANS 


make some arrangement among them. I 
should hardly feel at liberty to interfere 
with their plans.” 

“But her Aunt Elinor is going to 
France, and you know the James Camer- 
ons’ house is in quarantine. That leaves 
only the Vermont Camerons — ” 

“Oh, yes. I remember, now, there was 
a third brother. They have their plans, 
probably.” 

And that was absolutely all Bess could 
get her mother to say. 

“But, Mother,” she almost sobbed at 
last, “I — I asked her !” 

“Then I am afraid you will have to un- 
ask her,” said Mrs. Royce. “We really 
can’t get another person into the house this 
summer, with your Aunt Grace and her 
family coming in July.” 

Then it was that Elliott discovered the 
impasse. Try as she would, she could find 
no way out, and she lost a good deal of 
sleep in the attempt. To have to do some- 
23 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


thing that she did n’t wish to do was intol- 
erable. You may think this very silly; if 
you do, it shows that you have not always 
had your own way. Elliott had never had 
anything but her own way. That it had 
been in the main a sweet and likable way 
did not change the fact. And how Stan- 
nard would gloat over her ! He had had to 
do the thing himself, but secretly she had 
looked down on him for it, just as she had 
always despised girls who lamented their 
obligation to go to places where they did 
not wish to go. There was always, she 
had held, a way out, if you used your 
brains. Altogether, it was a disconcerted, 
bewildered, and thoroughly put-out young 
lady who, a week later, found herself tak- 
ing the train for Highboro. The world 
— her familiar, complacent, agreeable 
world — had lost its equilibrium. 


24 


CHAPTER II 


THE END OF A JOURNEY 

H OURS later, from a red-plush, Pull- 
manless train, Elliott Cameron 
stepped down to three people — a tall, dark, 
surprisingly pretty girl a little older than 
herself, a chunky girl of twelve, and a 
middle-sized, freckle-faced boy. The boy 
took her bag and asked for her trunk- 
checks quite as well as any of her other 
cousins could have done and the tall girl 
kissed her and said how glad they were to 
have the chance to know her. 

“I am Laura,” she said, “and here is 
Gertrude; and Henry will bring up your 
trunks to-morrow, unless you need them 
to-night. Mother sent you her love. Oh, 
we ’re so glad to have you come !” 

25 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

Then it is to be feared that Elliott per- 
jured herself. Her all-day journey had 
not in the least reconciled her to the situa- 
tion; if anything, she was feeling more 
bewildered and put out than when she 
started. But surprise and dismay had not 
routed her desire to please. She smiled 
prettily as her glance swept the welcoming 
faces, and kissed the girls and handed the 
boy two bits of pasteboard, and said — Oh, 
Elliott! — how delighted she was to see 
them at last. You would never have 
dreamed from Elliott’s lips that she was 
not overjoyed at the chance to come to 
Highboro and become acquainted with 
cousins that she had never known. 

But Laura, who was wiser than she 
looked, noticed that the new-comer’s eyes 
were not half so happy as her tongue. 
Poor dear, thought Laura, how pretty she 
was and how daintily patrician and charm- 
ing! But her father was on his way to 
France! And though he went in civilian 
26 


THE END OF A JOURNEY 

capacity and was n’t in the least likely to 
get hurt, when they were seated in the car 
Laura leaned over and kissed her new 
cousin again, with the recollection warm 
on her lips of empty, anxious days when 
she too had waited for the release of 
the cards announcing safe arrivals over- 
seas. 

Elliott, who was every minute realizing 
more fully the inexorableness of the fact 
that she was where she was and not where 
she was n’t, kissed back without much 
thought. It was her nature to kiss back, 
however she might feel underneath, and 
the surprising suddenness of the whole af- 
fair had left her numb. She really had n’t 
much curiosity about the life into which 
she was going. What did it matter, since 
she didn’t intend to stay in it? Just as 
soon as the quarantine was lifted from 
Uncle James’s house she meant to go back 
to Cedarville. But she did notice that the 
little car was not new, that on their way 
27 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


through the town every one they met 
bowed and smiled, that Henry had amaz- 
ingly good manners for a country boy, that 
Laura looked very strong, that Gertrude 
was all hands and elbows and feet and 
eyes, and that the car was continually 
either climbing up or sliding down hills. 
It slid out of the village down a hill, and 
it was climbing a hill when it met squarely 
in the road a long, low, white house, 
canopied by four big elms set at the four 
corners, and gave up the ascent alto- 
gether with a despairing honk-honk of its 
horn. 

A lady rose from the wide veranda of 
the white house, laid something gray on a 
table, and came smilingly down the steps. 
A little girl of eight followed her, two dogs 
dashed out, and a kitten. The road ran 
into the yard and stopped ; but behind the 
house the hill kept on going up. Elliott 
understood that she had arrived at the 
Robert Camerons’. 


28 


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Laura took the new cousin up to her room 









THE END OF A JOURNEY 

The lady, who was tall and dark-haired, 
like Laura, but with lines of gray thread- 
ing the black, put her arms around the girl 
and kissed her. Even in her preoccupa- 
tion, Elliott was dimly aware that the qual- 
ity of this embrace was subtly different 
from any that she had ever received be- 
fore, though the lady’s words were not 
unlike Laura’s. “Dear child,” she said, 
“we are so glad to know you.” And the 
big dark eyes smiled into Elliott’s with a 
look that was quite new to that young per- 
son’s experience. She did n’t know why 
she felt a queer thrill run up her spine, but 
the thrill was there, just for a minute. 
Then it was gone and the girl only thought 
that Aunt Jessica had the most fascinating 
eyes that she had ever seen ; whenever she 
chose, it seemed that she could turn on a 
great steady light to shine through their 
velvety blackness. 

Laura took the new cousin up to her 
room. The house through which they 
29 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

passed seemed rather a barren affair, but 
somehow pleasant in spite of its dark 
painted floors and rag rugs and unmistak- 
ably shabby furniture. Flowers were 
everywhere, doors stood open, and breezes 
blew in at the windows, billowing the 
straight scrim curtains. The guest’s room 
was small and slant-ceilinged. One pic- 
ture, an unframed photograph of a big 
tree leaning over a brook, was tacked to 
the wall; a braided rug lay on the floor; 
on a small table were flowers and a book; 
over the queer old chest of drawers hung a 
small mirror; there was no pier-glass at 
all. Very spotless and neat, but bare — 
hopelessly bare, unless one liked that sort 
of thing. 

There was one bit of civilization, how- 
ever, that these people appreciated — one’s 
need of warm water. As Elliott bathed 
and dressed, her spirits lightened a little. 
It did rather freshen a person’s outlook, 
on a hot day, to get clean. She even 
30 


THE END OF A JOURNEY 

opened the book to discover its name. 
“Lorna Doone.” Was that the kind of 
thing they read at the farm? She had al- 
ways meant to read “Lorna Doone,” when 
she had time enough. It looked so inter- 
minably long. But there would n’t be 
much else to do up here, she reflected. 
Then she surveyed what she could of her- 
self in the dim little mirror — probably 
Laura would wish to copy her style of 
hair-dressing — and descended, very slen- 
der and chic, to supper. 

It was a big circle which sat down at 
that supper-table. There was Uncle 
Robert, short and jolly and full of jokes, 
who wished to hear all about everybody 
and plied Elliott with questions. There 
was another new cousin, a wiry boy called 
Tom, and a boy older than Henry, who 
certainly was n’t a cousin, but who seemed 
very much one of the family and who was 
introduced as Bruce Fearing. And there 
was Stannard. Stannard had returned in 
3i 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

high feather from Upton and intercourse 
with a classmate whom he would doubtless 
have termed his kind. Stannard was in- 
clined for a minute or two to indulge in 
code talk with Elliott. She did not en- 
courage him and it amused her to observe 
how speedily the conversation became gen- 
eral again, though in quite what way it 
was accomplished she could not detect. 

But if these new cousins’ manners were 
above reproach, their supper-table was far 
from sophisticated. No maid appeared, 
and Gertrude and Tom and eight-year-old 
Priscilla changed the plates. Laura and 
Aunt Jessica, Elliott noticed, had entered 
from the kitchen. It was no secret that 
all the girls had been berrying in the fore- 
noon. Henry seemed to have had a hand 
in making the ice-cream, judging by the 
compliments he received. So that was the 
way they lived, thought the new guest! 
It was, however, a surprisingly good sup- 
per. Elliott was astonished at herself for 
32 


THE END OF A JOURNEY 

eating so much salad, so many berries and 
muffins, and for passing her plate twice for 
ice-cream. 

After supper every one seemed to feel 
it the natural thing to set to work and “do” 
the dishes, or something else equally press- 
ing; at least every one for a short time 
grew amazingly busy. Even Elliott asked 
for an apron — it was Elliott’s code when 
in Rome to do as the Romans do — though 
she was relieved when her uncle tucked 
her arm in his and said she must come and 
talk to him on the porch. As they left 
the kitchen, the boy Bruce was skilfully 
whirling a string mop in a pan full of hot 
suds. 

Under cover of animated chatter with 
her uncle Elliott viewed the prospect dole- 
fully. Dish-washing came three times a 
day, did n’t it ? The thing was evidently 
a family rite in this household. The girl 
understood her respite could be only tem- 
porary; self-respect would see to that. 
33 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


But did n’t she catch a glimpse of Stan- 
nard nonchalantly sauntering around a 
corner of the house with the air of one who 
hopes his back will not be noticed? 

Presently she discovered another house- 
hold custom — to go up to the top of the 
hill to watch the sunset. Up between 
flowering borders and through a grassy 
orchard the path climbed, thence to wind 
through thickets of sweet fern and scram- 
ble around boulders over a wild, fragrant 
pasture slope. It was beautiful up there 
on the hilltop, with its few big sheltering 
trees, its welter of green crests on every 
side, and its line of far blue peaks behind 
which the sun went down — beautiful but 
depressing. Depressing because every 
one, except Stannard, seemed to enjoy it 
so. Elliott could n’t help seeing that they 
were having a thoroughly good time. 
There was something engaging about 
these cousins that Elliott had never seen 
among her cousins at home, a good-fellow- 
34 


THE END OF A JOURNEY 

ship that gave one in their presence a 
sense of being closely knit together; of 
something solid, dependable and secure, 
for all its lightness and variety. But, oh, 
dear ! she knew that she was n’t going to 
care for the things that they cared for, or 
enjoy doing the things that they did ! And 
there must be at least six weeks of this 
— dish-washing and climbing hills, with 
good frocks on. Six weeks, not a day 
longer. But she exclaimed in pretty en- 
thusiasm over Laura’s disclosure of a bed 
of maidenhair fern, tasted approvingly 
Tom’s spring water, recited perfectly, 
after only one hearing, Henry’s tale of the 
peaks in view, and let Bruce Fearing give 
her a geography lesson from the southern- 
most point of the hilltop. 

It was only when at last she was in bed 
in the slant-ceilinged room, with her can- 
dle blown out and a big moon looking in at 
the window, that Elliott quite realized how 
forlorn she felt and how very, very far 
35 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

three thousand miles from Father was ac- 
tually going to seem. 

The world up here in Vermont was so 
very still. There were no lights except 
the stars, and for a person accustomed to 
an electrically illuminated street only a 
few rods from her window, stars and a 
moon merely added to the strangeness. 
Soft noises came from the other rooms, 
sounds of people moving about, but not a 
sound from outside, nothing except at in- 
tervals the cry of a mournful bird. After 
a while the noises inside ceased. Elliott 
lay quiet, staring at the moonlit room, and 
feeling more utterly miserable than she 
had ever felt before in her life. Home- 
sick ? It must be that this was homesick- 
ness. And she had been wont to laugh, 
actually laugh, at girls who said they were 
homesick! She had n’t known that it felt 
like this ! She had n’t known that any- 
thing in all the world could feel as hide- 
ous as this. She knew that in a minute 

36 


THE END OF A JOURNEY 

she was going to cry — she could n’t help 
herself ; actually, Elliott Cameron was go- 
ing to cry. 

A gentle tap came at the door. “Are 
you asleep ?” whispered a voice. “May I 
come in ?” 

Laura entered, a tall white shape that 
looked even taller in the moonlight. 

“Are you sleepy ?” she whispered. 

“Not in the least,” said Elliott. 

Laura settled softly on the foot of the 
bed. “I hoped you were n't. Let ’s talk. 
Does n’t it seem a shame to waste time 
sleeping on a night like this?” 

Elliott tossed her a pillow. It was com- 
forting to have Laura there, to hear a 
voice saying something, no matter what it 
was talking about. And Laura’s voice 
was very pleasant and what she said was 
pleasant, too. 

Soon another shape appeared at the 
door Laura had left half-open. “It is too 
fine a night to sleep, is n’t it, girls ?” Aunt 
37 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

Jessica crossed the strip of moonlight and 
dropped down beside Laura. 

“Are you all in here?” presently in- 
quired a third voice. “I could hear you 
talking and, anyway, I could n’t sleep.” 

“Come in,” said Elliott. 

Gertrude burrowed comfortably down 
on the other side of her mother. 

Elliott, watching the three on the foot 
of her bed, thought they looked very 
happy. Her aunt’s hair hung in two 
thick braids, like a girl’s, over her shoul- 
ders, and her face, seen in the moonlight, 
made Elliott feel things that she could n’t 
fit words to. She did n’t know what it 
was she felt, exactly, but the forlornness 
inside her began to grow less and less, un- 
til at last, when her aunt bent down and 
kissed her and a braid touched the pillow 
on each side of Elliott’s face, it was quite 
gone. 

“Good night, little girl,” said Aunt Jes- 
sica, “and happy dreams.” 

38 


CHAPTER III 


CAMERON FARM 

E LLIOTT opened her eyes to bright 
sunshine. For a minute she 
could n’t think where she was. Then the 
strangeness came back with a stab, not so 
poignant as on the night before but none 
the less actual. 

“Oh,” said a small, eager voice, “do you 
think you ’re going to stay waked up 
now?” 

Elliott’s eyes opened again, opened to 
see Priscilla’s round, apple-cheeked face 
at the door. 

“It is n’t nice to peek, I know, but I ’m 
going to get your breakfast, and how could 
I tell when to start it unless I watched to 
see when you waked up?” 

39 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

“You are going to get my breakfast?” 
Elliott rose on one elbow in astonishment. 
“All alone?” 

“Oh, yes !” said Priscilla. “Mother and 
Laura are making jelly, and shelling peas 
in between — to put up, you know — and 
Trudy is pitching hay, so they can't. Will 
you have one egg or two? And do you 
like ’em hard-boiled or soft; or would you 
rather have ’em dropped on toast? And 
how long does it take you to dress?” 

“One — soft-boiled, please. I ’ll be 

down in half an hour.” 

“Half an hour will give me lots of 
time.” The small face disappeared and 
the door closed softly. 

Elliott rose breathlessly and looked at 
her watch. Half an hour! She must 
hurry. Priscilla would expect her. Pris- 
cilla had the look of expecting people to 
do what they said they would. And here- 
after, of course, she must get up to break- 
fast. She wondered how Priscilla’s break- 
40 


CAMERON FARM 

fast would taste. Heavens, how these 
people worked ! 

As a matter of fact, Priscilla’s break- 
fast tasted delicious. The toast was done 
to a turn; the egg was of just the right 
softness; a saucer of fresh raspberries 
waited beside a pot of cream, and the whole 
was served on a little table in a corner of 
the veranda. 

“Laura said you ’d like it out here,” 
Priscilla announced anxiously. “Do 
you?” 

“Very much indeed.” 

“That ’s all right, then. I ’m going to 
have some berries and milk right opposite 
you. I always get hungry about this time 
in the forenoon.” 

“When do you have breakfast, regular 
breakfast, I mean?” 

“At six o’clock in summer, when there ’s 
so much to do.” 

Six o’clock ! Elliott turned her gasp of 
astonishment into a cough. 

4i 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

“I sometimes choke,” said Priscilla, 
“when I ’m awfully hungry.” 

“Does Stannard eat breakfast at six?” 
Elliott felt she must get to the bed-rock of 
facts. 

“Oh, yes!” 

“What is he doing now?” 

Priscilla wrinkled her small brow. 
“Father and Bruce and Henry are haying, 
and Tom ’s hoeing carrots. I think Stan ’s 
hoeing carrots, too. One day last week he 
hoed up two whole rows of beets; he 
thought they were weeds. Oh !” A small 
hand was clapped over the round red 
mouth. “I did n’t mean to tell you that. 
Mother said I must n’t ever speak of it, 
’cause he ’d feel bad. Don’t you think 
you could forget it, quick?” 

“I ’ve forgotten it now.” 

“That ’s all right, then. After break- 
fast I ’m going to show you my chickens 
and my calf. Did you know, I ’ve a whole 
calf all to myself? — a black-and-whitey 
42 


CAMERON FARM 


one. There are some cunning pigs, too. 
Maybe you ’d like to see them. And then 
I ’spect you 'll want to go out to the hay- 
field, or maybe make jelly.” 

“Oh, yes/’ said Elliott, “I can’t see any 
of it too soon.” But she was ashamed of 
her double meaning, with those round, 
eager eyes upon her. And her heart went 
down quite into her boots. 

But the chickens, she had to confess, 
were rather amusing. Priscilla had them 
all named and was quite sure some of 
them, at least, answered to their names 
and not merely to the sound of her voice. 
She appealed to Elliott for corroboration 
on this point and Elliott grew almost in- 
terested trying to decide whether or not 
Chanticleer knew he was “Chanticleer” 
and not “Sunflower.” There were also 
“Fluff” and “Scratch” and “Lady Gay” 
and “Ruby Crown” and “Marshal Haig” 
and “General Petain” and many more, be- 
sides “Brevity,” so named because, as Pris- 
43 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


cilia solicitously explained, she never 
seemed to grow. They all, with the ex- 
ception of Brevity, looked as like as peas to 
Elliott, but Priscilla seemed to have no dif- 
ficulty in distinguishing them. 

Priscilla’s enthusiasm was contagious; 
or, to be more exact, it was so big and 
warm and generous that it covered any 
deficiency of enthusiasm in another. El- 
liott found herself trailing Priscilla 
through the barns and even out to see the 
pigs, meeting Ferdinand Foch, the very 
new colt, and Kitchener of Khartoum, who 
had been a new colt three years before, 
and almost holding hands with the “black- 
and-whitey” calf, which Priscilla had very 
nearly decided to call General Pershing. 
And did n’t Elliott think that would be a 
nice name, with “JJ-” f° r short? Elliott 
had barely delivered herself of a some- 
what amused affirmative (though the 
amusement she knew enough to conceal), 
when the small tongue tripped into the 
44 


CAMERON FARM 

pigs’ roster. Every animal on the farm 
seemed to have a name and a personality. 
Priscilla detailed characteristics quite as 
though their possessors were human. 

It was an enlightened but somewhat 
surfeited cousin whom Priscilla blissfully 
escorted into the summer kitchen, a big 
latticed space filled with the pleasant odors 
of current jelly. On the broad table stood 
trays of ruby-filled glasses. 

“We ’ve seen all the creatures,” Priscilla 
announced jubilantly “and she loves ’em. 
Oh, the jelly’s done, isn’t it? Mumsie, 
may we scrape the kettle?” 

Aunt Jessica laughed. “Elliott may not 
care to scrape kettles.” 

Priscilla opened her eyes wide at the ab- 
surdity of the suggestion. “You do, don’t 
you ? You must ! Everybody does. Just 
wait a minute till I get spoons.” 

“I don’t think I quite know how to do 
it,” said Elliott. 

The next minute a teaspoon was thrust 

45 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

into her hand. “Did n’t you ever?” 
Priscilla’s voice was both aghast and pity- 
ing. “It wastes a lot, not scraping kettles. 
Good as candy, too. Here, you begin.” 
She pushed a preserving-kettle forward 
hospitably. 

Elliott hesitated. 

“7 7/ show you.” The small hand shot 
in, scraped vigorously for a minute, and 
withdrew, the spoon heaped with ruddy 
jelly. “There ! Mother did n’t leave as 
much as usual, though. I ’spect it ’s 
’cause sugar ’s so scarce. She thought she 
must put it all into the glasses. But 
there ’s always something you can scrape 
up.” 

“It is delicious,” said Elliott, graciously; 
“and what a lovely color !” 

Priscilla beamed. “You may have two 
scrapes to my one, because you have so 
much time to make up.” 

“You generous little soul! I couldn’t 

46 


CAMERON FARM 


think of doing that. We will take our 
‘scrapes’ together.” 

Priscilla teetered a little on her toes. “I 
like you,” she said. “I like you a whole 
lot. I ’d hug you if my hands were n’t 
sticky. Scraping kettles makes you aw- 
ful sticky. You make me think of a 
princess, too. You ’re so bee-yeautiful to 
look at. Maybe that is n’t polite to say. 
Mother says it is n’t always nice to speak 
right out all you think.” 

The dimples twinkled in Elliott’s cheeks. 
“When you think things like that, it is po- 
lite enough.” In the direct rays of Pris- 
cilla’s shining admiration she began to feel 
like her normal, petted self once more. 
Complacently she followed the little girl 
into the main kitchen. It was a long, low, 
sunny room with a group of three windows 
at each end, through which the morning 
breeze pushed coolly. Between the win- 
dows opened many doors. At one side 
47 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


stood a range, all shining nickel and cleanly 
black. Opposite the range, at a gleaming 
white sink, Aunt Jessica was busying her- 
self with many pans. At an immaculately 
scoured table Laura was pouring peas into 
glass jars. On the walls was a blue-and- 
white paper ; even the woodwork was 
white. 

“I did n’t know a kitchen,” Elliott spoke 
impulsively, “could be so pretty.” 

“This is our work-room,” said her aunt. 
“We think the place where we work ought 
to be the prettiest room in the house. 
White paint requires more frequent scrub- 
bing than colored paint; but the girls say 
they don’t mind, since it keeps our spirits 
smiling. Would you like to help dry these 
pans? You will find towels on that line 
behind the stove.” 

Elliott brought the dish-towels, and 
proceeded to forget her own surprise at 
the request in the interest of Aunt Jessi- 
ca’s talk. Mrs. Cameron had a lovely 
48 


CAMERON FARM 


voice ; the girl did not remember ever hav- 
ing heard a more beautiful voice, and it 
was used with a cultured ease that sud- 
denly reminded Elliott of an almost for- 
gotten remark once made in her hearing by 
Stannard’s mother. “It is a sin and 
shame,” Aunt Margaret had said, “to bury 
a woman like Jessica Cameron on a farm. 
What possessed her to let Robert take her 
there in the first place is beyond my com- 
prehension. Granting that first mistake, 
why she has let him stay all these years is 
another enigma. Robert is all very well, 
but Jessica ! I would defy any one to pro- 
duce the situation anywhere that Jessica 
would n’t be equal to.” 

That had been a good deal for Aunt 
Margaret to say. Elliott had realized it 
at the time and wondered a little ; now she 
understood the words, or thought she did. 
Why, even drying milk-pans took on a cer- 
tain distinction when it was done in Aunt 
Jessica’s presence ! 


49 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


Then Aunt Jessica said something that 
really did surprise her young guest. She 
had been watching the girl closely, quite 
without Elliott's knowledge. 

“Perhaps you would like this for your 
own special part of the work," she said 
pleasantly. “We each have our little 
chores, you know. I couldn’t let every 
girl attempt the milk things, but you are 
so careful and thorough that I have n’t the 
least hesitation about giving them to you. 
Now I am going to wash the separator. 
Watch me, and then you will know just 
what to do.’’ 

The words left Elliott gasping. Wash 
the separator, all by herself, every day — 
or was it twice a day? — for as long as she 
stayed here! And pans — all these pans? 
What was a separator, anyway ? She 
wished flatly to refuse, but the words stuck 
in her throat. There was something about 
Aunt Jessica that you could n’t say no to. 
Aunt Jessica so palpably expected you to 
50 


CAMERON FARM 


be delighted. She was discriminating, 
too. She had recognized at once that El- 
liott was not an ordinary girl. But — 
but — 

It was all so disconcerting that self-pos- 
sessed Elliott stammered. She stammered 
from pure surprise and chagrin and a con- 
fusing mixture of emotions, but what she 
stammered was in answer to Aunt Jessica’s 
tone and extracted from her by the force 
of Aunt Jessica’s personality. The words 
came out in spite of herself. 

“Oh— oh, thank you,” she said, a bit 
blankly. Then she blushed with confu- 
sion. How awkward she had been. 
Ought n’t Aunt Jessica to have thanked 
her? 

If Aunt Jessica noticed either the con- 
fusion or the blankness, she gave no sign. 

“That will be fine!” she said heartily. 
“I saw by the way you handled those pans 
that I could depend on you.” 

Insensibly Elliott’s chin lifted. She re- 
51 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

garded the pans with new interest. “Of 
course,” she assented, “one has to be par- 
ticular.” 

“Very particular,” said Aunt Jessica, 
and her dark eyes smiled on the girl. 

The words, as she spoke them, sounded 
like a compliment. It might n’t be so bad, 
Elliott reflected, to wash milk-pans every 
morning. And in Rome you do as the Ro- 
mans do. She watched closely while Aunt 
Jessica washed the separator. She could 
easily do that, she was sure. It did not 
seem to require any unusual skill or 
strength or brain-power. 

“It is not hard work,” said Aunt Jessica, 
pleasantly. “But so many girls are n’t de- 
pendable. I couldn’t count on them to 
make everything clean. Sometimes I 
think just plain dependableness is the most 
delightful trait in the world. It ’s so rare, 
you know.” 

Elliott opened her eyes wide. She had 
been accustomed to hear charm and wit 
52 


CAMERON FARM 


and vivacity spoken of in those terms, but 
dependableness? It had always seemed 
such a homely, commonplace thing, not 
worth mentioning. And here was Aunt 
Jessica talking of it as of a crown jewel! 
Right down in her heart at that minute El- 
liott vowed that the separator should al- 
ways be clean. 

The separator, however, must not com- 
mit her indiscriminately, she saw that 
clearly. Perhaps in fact, it would save 
her. Had n’t Aunt Jessica said each had 
her own tasks ? Ergo, you let others 
alone. But she had an uncomfortable 
feeling that this reasoning might prove 
false in practice; in this household a good 
many tasks seemed to be pooled. How 
about them ? 

And then Laura looked up from her jars 
and said the oddest thing yet in all this 
morning of odd sayings: “Oh, Mother, 
may n’t we take our dinner out ? It is such 
a perfectly beautiful day !” As though a 
53 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

beautiful day had anything to do with 
where you ate your dinner ! 

But Aunt Jessica, without the least sur- 
prise in her voice, responded promptly: 
“Why, yes! We have three hours free 
now, and it seems a crime to stay in the 
house. ,, 

What in the world did they mean ? 
Priscilla seemed to have no difficulty in 
understanding. She jumped up and down 
and cried: “Oh, goody! goody! We’re 
going to take our dinner out! We ’re go- 
ing to take our dinner out ! Is n’t it 

joiiy r 

She was standing in front of Elliott as 
she spoke, and the girl felt that some re- 
ply was expected of her. “Why, can we ? 
Where do we go?” she asked, exactly as 
though she expected to see a hotel spring 
up out of the ground before her eyes. 

“Lots of days we do,” said Priscilla. 
“We ’ll find a nice place. Oh, I ’m glad it 
takes peas three whole hours to can them- 
54 


CAMERON FARM 

selves. I think they ’re kind of slow, 
though, don’t you?” 

Laura noticed the bewilderment on El- 
liott’s face. “Priscilla means that we are 
going to eat our dinner out-of-doors while 
the peas cook in the hot-water bath,” she 
explained. “Don’t you want to pack up 
the cookies? You will find them in that 
stone crock on the first shelf in the pantry, 
right behind the door. There ’s a paste- 
board box in there, too, that will do to put 
them in.” 

“How many shall I put up?” questioned 
Elliott. 

“Oh, as many as you think we ’ll eat. 
And I warn you we have good appetites.” 

Those were the vaguest directions, El- 
liott thought, that she had ever heard ; but 
she found the box and the stone pot of 
cookies and stood a minute, counting the 
people who were to eat them. Four right 
here in the kitchen and five — no, six — out- 
of-doors. Would two dozen cookies be 
55 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

enough for ten people? 'She put her head 
into the kitchen to ask, but there was no 
one in sight, so she had to decide the point 
by herself. After nibbling a crumb she 
thought not, and added another dozen. 
And then there was still so much room left 
that she just filled up the box, regardless. 
Afterward she was very glad of it. She 
would n’t have supposed it possible for ten 
people to eat as many cookies as those ten 
people ate after all the other things they had 
eaten. 

By the time she had finished her calcu- 
lations with the cookies, Aunt Jessica and 
Laura and Priscilla were ready. When 
Elliott emerged from the pantry, the little 
car was at the kitchen door, with a hamper 
and two pails of water in it, and on the 
back seat a long, queer-looking box that 
Laura told Elliott was a fireless cooker. 

“Home-made,” said Laura, “you ’d 
know that to look at it, but it works just 
as well. It ’s the grandest thing, espe- 

56 


CAMERON FARM 


daily when we want to eat out-of-doors. 
Saves lots of trouble. 

Elliott gasped. “You mean you carry 
it along to cook the dinner in?” 

“Why, the dinner ’s cooking in it now ! 
Hop on, everybody. Mother, you take the 
wheel. Elliott and I will ride on the 
steps.” 

Away they sped, bumpity-bump, to the 
hay-field, picking up the carrot-hoers as 
they went. It is astonishing how many 
people can cling to one little car, when 
those people are neither very wide nor, 
some of them, very tall. From the hay- 
field they nosed their way into a little dell, 
all ferns and cool white birches, and far 
above, a canopy of leaf-traceried blue 
sky. In the next few minutes it became 
very plain to the new cousin that the Cam- 
erons were used to doing this kind of 
thing. Every one seemed to know exactly 
what to do. The pails of water were 
swung to one side ; the fireless cooker took 
57 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

up its position on a flat gray rock. The 
hamper yielded loaves of bread — light and 
dark, that one cut for oneself on a smooth 
white board — and a basket stocked with 
plates and cups and knives and forks and 
spoons. Potted meat and potatoes and 
two kinds of vegetables, as they were 
wanted, came from the fireless cooker, all 
deliciously tender and piping hot. It was 
like a cafeteria in the open, thought Elliott, 
except that one had no tray. 

And every one laughed and joked and 
had a good time. Even Elliott had a 
fairly good time, though she thought it was 
thoroughly queer. You see, it had never 
occurred to her that people could pick up 
their dinner and run out-of-doors into any 
lovely spot that they came to, to eat it. 
She was n’t at all sure she cared for that 
way of doing things. But she liked the 
beauty of the little dell, the ferny smell of 
it, and the sunshine and cheerfulness. 
The occasional darning-needles, and small 

58 


CAMERON FARM 

green worms, and black or other colored 
bugs, she enjoyed less. She had n’t been 
accustomed to associate such things with 
her dinner. But nobody else seemed to 
mind ; perhaps the others were used to tak- 
ing bugs and worms with their meals. If 
one appeared, they threw him away and 
went on eating as though nothing had hap- 
pened. 

And of course it was rather clever of 
them, the girl reflected, to take a picnic 
when they could get it. If they hadn’t 
done so, she did n’t quite see, judging by 
the portion of a day she had so far ob- 
served, how they could have got any pic- 
nics at all. The method utilized scraps of 
time, left-overs and between-times, that 
were good for little else. It was a rather 
arresting discovery, to find out that people 
could divert themselves without giving up 
their whole time to it. But, after all, it 
was n’t a method for her. She was posi- 
tive on that point. It seemed the least lit- 
59 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


tie bit common, too — such whole-hearted 
absorption as the Camerons showed in pur- 
suits that were just plain work. 

“■Stan,” she demanded, late that after- 
noon, “is there any tennis here?” 

“Not so you ’d notice it. What are you 
thinking of, in war-time, Elliott? Uncle 
Samuel expects every farmer to do his 
duty. All the men and older boys around 
here have either volunteered or been 
drafted. So we 're all farmers, especially 
the girls. Quod erat demonstrandum. 
Savvy?” 

“Any luncheons ?” 

“Meals, Lot, plain meals.” 

“Parties?” 

Stannard threw up his hands. “Never 
heard of ’em !” 

“Canoeing?” 

“No water big enough.” 

“I suppose nobody here thinks of motor- 
ing for pleasure.” 

“Never. Too busy.” 

60 


CAMERON FARM 


“Or gets an invitation for a spin?” 

“You ’re behind the times.” 

“So I see.” 

“Harry told me that this summer is 
extra strenuous,” Stannard explained ; 
“but they ’ve always rather gone in for the 
useful, I take it. Had to, most likely. 
They ’d be all right, too, if they did n’t live 
so. They ’re a good sort, an awfully good 
sort. But, ginger, how a fellow ’d have 
to hump to keep up with ’em ! I don’t try. 
I do a little, and then sit back and call it 
done.” 

If Elliott had n’t been so miserable, she 
would have laughed. Stannard had hit 
himself off very well, she thought. He 
had his good points, too. Not once had 
he reminded her that she had n’t intended 
to spend her summer on a farm. But she 
was too unhappy to tease him as she might 
have done at another time. She was still 
bewildered and inclined to resent the trick 
life had played her. The prospect did n’t 
61 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


look any better on close inspection than it 
had at first; rather worse, if anything. 
Imagine her, Elliott Cameron pitching 
hay ! Not that any one had asked her to. 
But how could a person live for six weeks 
with these people and not do what they 
did? Such was Elliott’s code. Delight- 
ful people, too. But she did n’t wish to 
pitch hay and she loathed washing dishes. 
There was something so messy about dish- 
washing, ordinary dish-washing; milk- 
pans were different. 

Then suddenly Elliott Cameron did a 
strange thing. By this time she had 
shaken off Stannard and had betaken her- 
self and her disgust to the edge of the 
woods. She was so very miserable that 
she did n’t know herself and she knew her- 
self less than ever in this next act. Alone 
in the woods, as she thought, with only 
moss underfoot and high green boughs 
overhead, Elliott lifted her foot and de- 
liberately and with vehemence stamped it. 

62 


CAMERON FARM 


“I don’t like things!” she whispered, a lit- 
tle shocked at her own words. “I don’t 
like things !” 

Then she looked up and met the amused 
eyes of Bruce Fearing. 

For a minute the hot color flooded the 
girl’s face. But she seized the bull by the 
horns. “I am cross,” she said, “fright- 
fully cross!” And she looked so engag- 
ingly pretty as she said it that Bruce 
thought he had never seen so attractive a 
girl. 

“Anything in particular gone wrong 
with the universe?” 

“Everything, with my part of it.” 
What possessed her, she wondered after- 
ward, to say what she said next? “I 
never wanted to come here.” 

“That so? We’ve been thinking it 
rather nice.” 

In spite of herself, she was mollified. 
“It is n’t quite that, either,” she explained. 
“I ’ve only just discovered the real trou- 

63 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

ble, myself. What makes me so mad is n’t 
altogether the fact that I did n’t want to 
come up here. It ’s that I had n’t any 
choice. I had to come.” 

The boy’s eyes twinkled. “So that ’s 
what ’s bothering you, is it ? Cheer up ! 
You had the choice of how you ’d come, 
didn’t you?” 

“How?” 

“Yes. Sometimes I think that ’s all the 
choice they give us in this world. It ’s all 
I ’ve had, anyway — how I ’d do a thing.” 

“You mean, gracefully or — ” 

“I mean — ” 

“Hello !” said Stannard’s voice. “What 
are you two chinning about before the 
cows come home?” 


64 


CHAPTER IV 


IN UNTRODDEN FIELDS 

: ‘"\7 r OU don’t want to have much to do 
JL with that fellow,” said Stannard, 
when Bruce Fearing had gone on about 
whatever business he had in hand. 

“Why not?” Elliott’s tone was short. 
She had wanted to hear what Bruce was 
going to say. 

“Oh, he is all right, enough, I guess, but 
nobody knows where he came from. He 
and that Pete brother of his are no rela- 
tions of ours, or of Aunt Jessica’s either.” 

“How does he happen to be living here, 
then?” 

“Search me. Some kind of a pick-up, 
I gathered. Nobody talks much about it. 
They take him as a matter of course. All 

65 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


right enough for them, if they want to, 
but they really ought to warn strangers. 
A fellow would think he was — er — all 
right, you know.” 

Stannard’s words made Elliott very un- 
comfortable. She thought the reason they 
disquieted her was that she had rather 
liked Bruce Fearing, and now to have him 
turn out a person whom she could n’t be as 
friendly with as she wished was discon- 
certing. It was only another point in her 
indictment of life on the Cameron farm; 
one could n’t tell whom one was knowing. 
But she determined to sound Laura, which 
would be easy enough, and Stannard’s 
charge might prove unfounded. 

But sounding Laura was not easy, 
chiefly for the reason Stannard had 
shrewdly deduced, that the Robert Camer- 
ons took Peter and Bruce Fearing in quite 
as matter-of-fact a way as they took them- 
selves. Laura even failed to discover that 
she was being sounded. 

66 


IN UNTRODDEN FIELDS 

“Who is this ‘Pete’ you ’re always talk- 
ing about ?” Elliott asked. 

“Bruce’s older brother — I almost said 
ours.” The two girls were skimming cur- 
rants, Laura with the swift skill of accus- 
tomed fingers, Elliott more slowly. “He 
is perfectly fine. I wish you could know 
him.” 

“I gathered he was Bruce’s brother.” 

“He ’s not a bit like Bruce. Pete is 
short and dark and as quick as a flash. 
You ’d know he would make a splendid 
aviator. There was a letter in the 'Upton 
News’ last night from an Upton doctor 
who is over there, attached now to our 
boys’ camp ; did you see it ? He says Bob 
and Pete are 'the acknowledged aces’ of 
their squadron. That shows we must 
have missed some of their letters. The 
last one from Bob was written just after 
he had finished his training.” 

“This — Pete went from here?” 

“He and Bob were in Tech together, 

67 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

juniors. They enlisted in Boston, and 
they ’ve kept pretty close tabs on each 
other ever since. They had their training 
over here in the same camps. In France, 
Pete got into spirals first, 'by a fluke/ as 
he put it ; Bob was unlucky with his land- 
ings. But, some way or other, Bob seems 
to have beaten him to the actual fighting. 
Now they ’re in it together.” And Laura 
smiled and then sighed, and the nimble 
fingers stopped work for a minute, only 
to speed faster than ever. 

“I have n’t read you any of their let- 
ters, have I? Or Sid’s either? (Sidney 
is my twin, you know. He is at Devens. ) 
But I will. If anything, Pete’s are fun- 
nier than Bob’s. Both the boys have an 
eye to the jolly side of things. Some- 
times you would n’t think there was any- 
thing to flying but a huge lark, by the way 
they write. But there was one letter of 
Pete’s (it was to Mother), written from 
their first training-camp in France after 
68 


IN UNTRODDEN FIELDS 

one of the boys’ best friends had been 
killed. Pete was evidently feeling sober, 
but oh, so different from the way any one 
would have felt about such a thing before 
the war began ! There was plenty of fun 
in the letter, too, but toward the end, Pete 
told about this Jim Stone’s death, and he 
said: Tt has made us all pretty serious, 
but nobody ’s blue. Jim was a splendid 
fellow, and a chap can’t think he has 
stopped as quick as all that. Mother 
Jess, do you remember my talking to you 
one Sunday after church, freshman vaca- 
tion, about the things I did n’t believe in ? 
Why did n’t you tell me I was a fool ? You 
knew it then, and I know it now.’ That ’s 
Pete all over. It made Mother and me 
very happy.” 

Elliott felt rather ashamed to continue 
her probing. “Have they always lived 
with you,” she asked, “the Fearings?” 

“Oh, yes, ever since I can remember. 
Is n’t Bruce splendid? I don’t know how 
69 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

we could have got on at all this summer 
without Bruce.” 

Then Elliott gave up. If a mystery ex- 
isted, either Laura didn’t know of it, or 
she had forgotten it, or else she considered 
it too negligible to mention. 

The girl found that for some reason she 
did not care to ask Stannard the source 
of his information. Would Bruce himself 
prove communicative ? There could be no 
harm in finding out. Besides, it would 
tease Stannard to see her talking with 
“that fellow,” and Elliott rather enjoyed 
teasing Stannard. And didn’t she owe 
him something for a dictatorial interrup- 
tion? 

The thing would require manoeuvering. 
You could n’t talk to Bruce Fearing, or to 
any one else up here, whenever you felt 
like it; he was far too busy. But on 
the hill at sunset Elliott found her 
chance. 

“I think Aunt Jessica,” she remarked, 
70 


IN UNTRODDEN FIELDS 

“is the most wonderful woman I ’ve ever 
seen.” 

A glow lit up Bruce’s quiet gray eyes. 
“Mother Jess,” he said, “is a miracle.” 

“She is so terrifically busy, and yet she 
never seems to hurry ; and she always has 
time to talk to you and she never acts 
tired.” 

“She is, though.” 

“I suppose she must be, sometimes. I 
like that name for her, ‘Mother Jess.’ 
Your — aunt, is she?” 

“Oh, no,” said Bruce, simply. “I ’ve no 
Cameron or Fordyce blood in me, or any 
other pedigreed variety. My corpuscles 
are unregistered. She and Father Bob 
took Pete and me in when I was a baby 
and Pete was a mere toddler. I was born 
in the hotel down in the town there, — Am I 
boring you ?” 

“No, indeed!” Elliott had the grace 
to blush at the ease with which she was 
carrying on her investigation. 

7 * 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

He wondered why she flushed, but went 
on quietly. “Our own mother died there 
in the hotel when I was a week old and we 
did n’t seem to have any kin. At least, 
they never showed up. Mother was evi- 
dently a widow ; Mother Jess got that from 
her belongings. She stopped overnight at 
Highboro, and I was born there. She 
had n’t told any one in the hotel where she 
was going. Registered from Boston, but 
nobody could be found in Boston who knew 
of her. The authorities were going to 
send Pete and me to some kind of a capi- 
talized Home, when Mother Jess stepped 
in. She had n’t enough boys, so she said. 
Bob and Laura and Sid were on deck. 
Henry and Tom came along later. For- 
dyce was the one that died; he’d just 
slipped out. Mother Jess was feeling 
lonely, I guess. Anyway, she took us 
two; said she thought we’d be better off 
on the farm than in a Home and she 
needed us — bless her! Do you wonder 
72 


IN UNTRODDEN FIELDS 


Pete and I swear by the Camerons ?” 

“No,” said Elliott. “Indeed I don , t. ,, 
She had what she had been angling for, in 
good measure, but she rather wished she 
had n’t got it, after all. “Have n’t you 
had any clue in all these years as to who 
your people were?” 

“Not the slightest. I ’m willing to let 
things rest as they are.” 

“Yes, of course,” thought Elliott, 
“but — ” She let it go at “but.” Ought n’t 
somebody, as Stannard said, to have 
warned her? These boys’ people might 
have been very common persons, not at all 
like Camerons. The fact that no relatives 
appeared proved that, did n’t it ? Every 
one who was any one at all had a family. 
Bruce did not look common : his gray eyes 
and his broad forehead and his keen, thin 
face were almost distinguished, and his 
manners were above criticism. But one 
never could tell. And had n’t he been 
brought up by Camerons ? The very 
73 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


openness with which he had told his story 
had something fine about it. He, like 
Laura, seemed to see nothing in it to con- 
ceal. 

Well, was there? Elliott could quite 
clearly imagine what Aunt Margaret, 
Stannard’s mother, would say to that 
question. She had never especially cared 
for Aunt Margaret. As Elliott looked at 
Bruce Fearing, one of the pillars of her 
familiar world began to totter. Actually, 
she could think of no particularly good 
reason why, when she had heard his story, 
she should proceed to shun him. His his- 
tory simply did n’t seem to matter, except 
to make her sorry for him; and yet she 
could n’t be really sorry for a boy who had 
been brought up by Aunt Jessica. 

Perhaps the Cameron Farm atmos- 
phere was already beginning to work. 

“I think you and your brother had luck,” 
she said. 

“I know we did,” answered Bruce. 

74 


IN UNTRODDEN FIELDS 


Elliott turned the conversation. “I 
wish you could tell me what you were go- 
ing to say, when we were interrupted yes- 
terday, about a person’s having no choice 
except how he will do things — you having 
had only that kind of choice.” 

“I remember,” said Bruce. “Well, for 
one thing, I suppose I could get grouchy, 
if I chose, over not knowing who my peo- 
ple were.” 

“They may have been very splendid,” 
said Elliott. 

Bruce smiled. “It ’s not likely.” 

“In that case,” she countered, “you have 
the satisfaction of not knowing who they 
were.” 

“Exactly. But that ’s rather a crawl, 
isn’t it? Of course, a fellow would like 
to know.” 

The boy bent forward, and, with pains- 
taking care, selected a blade from a tuft of 
grass growing between his feet. He nib- 
bled a minute before he spoke again. 

75 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


“See here, I ’m going to tell you some- 
thing I have n’t told a soul. I ’m crazy to 
go to the war. Sometimes it seems as 
though I could n’t stay home. When 
Pete’s letters come I have to go away some- 
where quick and chop wood ! Anything to 
get busy for a while.” 

“Aren’t you too young? Would they 
take you?” 

“Take me? You bet they’d take me! 
I ’m eighteen. Don’t I look twenty?” 

The girl’s eye ran critically over the 
strong young body, with its long, supple, 
sinewy lines. “Yes,” she nodded. “I 
think you do.” 

“They ’d take me in a minute, in avia- 
tion or anything else.” 

“Then why don’t you?” 

“Who ’d help Father Bob through the 
farm stunts? Young Bob’s gone, and 
Pete and Sidney. They were always here 
for the summer work. Henry ’s a fine lad, 
76 


IN UNTRODDEN FIELDS 

but a boy still. Tom ’s nothing but a boy, 
though he does his bit. As for the Wom- 
en’s Land Army, it ’s got up into these 
parts, but not in force. Father Bob can’t 
hire help : it ’s not to be had. That ’s why 
Mother Jess and the girls are going in so 
for farm work. They never did it be- 
fore this year, except in sport. We have 
more land under cultivation this summer 
than ever before, and fewer hands to 
harvest it with. But Mother and the girls 
sha’n’t have to work harder than they ’re 
doing now, if I can help it. Could I go 
off and leave them, after all they ’ve done 
for me? But that ’s not it, either — grati- 
tude. They ’re mine, Father Bob and 
Mother Jess are, and the rest; they ’re my 
folks. You ’re not exactly grateful to 
your own folks, you know. They belong 
to you. And you don’t leave what belongs 
to you in the lurch.” 

“No,” said Elliott. With awakened 

77 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


eyes she was watching Bruce. No boy 
had ever talked of such things to her be- 
fore. “So you 're not going?’" 

“Not of my own will. Of course, if the 
war lasts and I ’m drafted, or the help 
problem lightens up, it will be different. 
Pete ’s gone. It was Pete ’s right to go. 
He ’s the elder.” 

“But you are choosing,” Elliott cried 
earnestly. “Don’t you see? You’re 
choosing to stay at home and — ” words 
came swiftly into her memory — “ ‘fight it 
out on these lines all summer.’ ” 

Bruce’s smile showed that he recognized 
her quotation, but he shook his head. 
“Choosing? I haven’t any choice — ex- 
cept being decent about it. Don’t you see 
I can’t go? I can only try to keep from 
thinking about not going.” 

“You being you,” said the girl, and she 
spoke as simply and soberly as Bruce him- 
self, though her own warmth surprised 
her, “I see you can’t go. But was that all 
78 


IN UNTRODDEN FIELDS 


you meant” — her voice grew ludicrously 
disappointed — “by a person’s having a 
choice only of how he will do a thing? 
There ’s nothing to that but making the 
best of things !” 

Bruce Fearing threw back his head and 
laughed heartily. 

“You ’re the funniest girl I ’ve ever 
seen.” 

“Then you can’t have seen many. But 
is there ?” 

“Perhaps not. Stupid, is n’t it?” 

“Yes,” she nodded, “I ’m afraid it is. 
And frightfully old. I was hoping you 
were going to tell me something new and 
exciting. 

The boy chuckled again. “Nothing so 
good as that. Besides, I ’ve a hunch the 
exciting things are n’t very new, after all.” 

Elliott went to sleep that night, if not 
any happier, at least more interested. She 
had looked deep into the heart of a boy, 
different, it appeared, from any boy that 

79 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

she had ever known; and something loyal 
and sturdy and tender she had seen there 
had stirred her. It was odd how well ac- 
quainted she felt with him; odd, too, how 
curious she was to know him better, even 
though he had n’t the least idea who his 
grandfather had been. “Bother his 
grandfather !” Elliott chuckled to realize 
how such a sentiment would horrify Aunt 
Margaret. Grandfathers were very im- 
portant to Aunt Margaret and Aunt Mar- 
garet’s children. Grandfathers had al- 
ways seemed fairly important to Elliott 
herself until now. Was it their relative 
unimportance in the Robert Camerons’ es- 
timation, or a pair of steady gray eyes, 
that had altered her valuation? The girl 
did n’t know and she was keen enough to 
know that she did n’t ; keen enough, too, 
to perceive that the change in her estima- 
tion of grandfathers applied to a single 
case only and might be merely temporary. 

However that might be, she was not 
80 


IN UNTRODDEN FIELDS 

ready yet to do anything so inherently dis- 
tasteful as make the best of what she 
did n’t like, especially when nobody but 
herself and two boys would know it. 
When one makes the best of things, one 
likes to do it to crowded galleries, that per- 
ceive what is going on and applaud. The 
Robert Camerons, Elliott was quite sure, 
would n’t applaud. They would take it as 
a matter of course, just as they took her 
as a matter of course. They were quite 
charming about it, as delightful hosts as 
one could wish — if only they lived differ- 
ently ! — but Elliott was n’t used to being 
taken for granted. She might have been 
these new cousins’ own sort, for any dif- 
ference she could detect in their actions. 
They did n’t seem to begin to understand 
her importance. Perhaps she was n’t so 
important, after all. The doubt had never 
before entered her mind. 

The fact was, of course, that among 
these busy, efficient people she was feel- 
81 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

in g quite useless; and she didn’t like to 
appear incompetent when she knew her- 
self to be, in her own line, a thoroughly 
able person. But it irked her to think 
that she had been forced into a position 
where in self-defense she must either ac- 
quire a kind of efficiency she did n’t want 
or do without. At the same time it trou- 
bled her lest this reluctance become ap- 
parent. For they were all loves and she 
would n’t hurt their feelings for worlds. 
And she did wish them to admire her. 
But she had a feeling that they did n’t al- 
together, not even Priscilla and Bruce. 

Nevertheless, the next day when Laura 
asked whether she would take her book out 
to the hay-field or stay where she was on 
the porch, Elliott looked up from “Lorna 
Doone” and said, with the prettiest little 
coaxing air, “If I go, will you let me pitch 
hay?” And Laura answered as lightly, 
“Certainly.” “I don’t believe you,” said 
82 


IN UNTRODDEN FIELDS 

Elliott. “You may ride on the hay-load,” 
smiled Laura. “That won’t do at all,” 
Elliott shook her head. “If I can’t pitch 
hay, I ’ll stay here.” Laura laughed and 
said: “You certainly will be more com- 
fortable here. I can’t quite see you pitch- 
ing hay.” And Elliott retorted: “You 
don’t know what I could do, if I tried. 
But since you won’t let me try — ” 

It was all smiling and gay, but it was a 
crawl, and Elliott knew it and knew that 
Laura knew it, and she felt ashamed. 
Was n’t Stannard’s frank shirking better 
than her camouflaged variety? But 
had n’t she picked berries all the morning 
in a stuffy sunbonnet under a broiling sun, 
until she felt as red as a berry and much 
less fresh and sweet? 

“It ’s a shame,” said Laura, “that this 
is just our busy season; but you know you 
have to make hay while the sun shines. 
Father thinks we can finish the lower 

83 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

meadows to-day. Then to-morrow we 
begin cutting on the hill. It ’s really fun 
to ride the hay-rake. I mostly drive the 
rake, though now and then I pitch for 
variety.’’ 

She looked so strong and brown and 
merry, as she talked, that Elliott, comfort- 
ably established with “Lorna Doone,” felt 
almost like flinging her book into the next 
chair, slipping her arm through Laura’s, 
and crying, “Lead on!” But she remem- 
bered just in time that, as she hadn’t 
wished to come to the Cameron Farm, it 
would ill become her to have a good time 
there. Which may seem like a childish 
way of looking at the thing, but is n’t really 
confined to children at all. 

So the hay-makers tramped away down 
the road, their laughter floating cheerfully 
back over their shoulders; and Elliott sat 
on the big shady veranda and read her 
book. 

She might have enjoyed it less had she 
84 


IN UNTRODDEN FIELDS 

heard Henry’s frank summary at the turn 
of the lane, when his father inquired the 
whereabouts of Stannard. 

“Beau Brummell hiked over to Upton 
half an hour ago. I offered him the other 
Henry, but he does n’t seem to care to 
drive anything short of a Pierce-Arrow. 
Twins, aren’t they?” and Henry nodded 
in the direction of the veranda. 

“Sh-h!” reproved Laura. “They’re 
our guests.” 

“Guests is just it. Yes, they ’re guests, 
all right.” 

“Mother says they don’t know how to 
work,” Priscilla observed. 

“That ’s another true word, too.” 

Mother turned gaily in the road ahead. 
“Who is talking about me ?” she called. 

Priscilla frisked on to join her, and 
Henry fell back to a confidential exchange 
with Laura. “Beau would n’t be so bad if 
he could forget for a minute that he owned 
the earth and had a mortgage on the solar 

85 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


system. But when he tries to snub Bruce 
— gee, that gets me !” 

“Are n’t you twanging the G string 
rather often lately, Hal? — Stannard can’t 
snub Bruce. Bruce is n’t the kind of fel- 
low to be snubbed.” 

“Just the same, it makes me sick to think 
anybody ’s a cousin to me that would try 
it.” 

Laura switched back to the main subject. 
“We did n’t ask them up here as extra 
farm hands, you know.” 

“Bull’s-eye,” said Henry, and grinned. 

What she did not know failed to trou- 
ble Elliott. She read on in lonely peace 
through the afternoon. At a most excit- 
ing point the telephone rang. Four, that 
was the Cameron call. Elliott went into 
the house and took down the receiver. 

“Mr. Robert Cameron’s,” she said pleas- 
antly. 

“S-say!” stuttered a high, sharp voice, 
“my little b-b-boys have let your c-c-cows 
86 


IN UNTRODDEN FIELDS 


out o’ the p-p-pasture. I 'll g-give 'em a 
t-t-trouncin', but 't won't git your c-c-cows 
back. They let ’em out the G-G-Garrett 
Road, and your medder gate 's open. Jim 
B-B-Blake saw it this mornin' ! Why the 
man did n’t shut it, I d-d-dunno. You 'll 
have to hurry to save your medder." 

“But," gasped Elliott, “I don't under- 
stand! You say the cows — ” 

“Are cornin' down G-Garrett Road," 
snapped the stuttering voice, “the whole 
kit an’ b-b-bilin' of 'em. They '11 be inter 
your upper m-medder in five m-m-min- 
utes." 

Over the wire came the click of a re- 
ceiver snapping back on its hook. Elliott 
hung up and started toward the door. The 
cows had been let out. Just why this in- 
cident was so disastrous she did not quite 
comprehend, but she must go and tell her 
uncle. Before her feet touched the ver- 
anda, however, she stopped. Five min- 
utes ? Why, there would n’t be time to 

87 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


go to the lower meadow, to say nothing of 
any one’s doing anything about the situa- 
tion. 

And then, with breath-taking sudden- 
ness, the thing burst on her. She was 
alone in the house; even Aunt Jessica and 
Priscilla had gone to the hay-field. The 
situation, whatever it was, was up to her. 

For a minute the girl leaned weakly 
against the wall. Cows — there were 
thirty in the herd — and she loathed cows ! 
She was afraid of cows. She knew noth- 
ing about cows. She was never in the 
slightest degree sure of what the crea- 
tures might take it into their heads to do. 
For a minute she stood irresolute. Then 
something stirred in the girl, something 
self-reliant and strong. Never in her life 
had Elliott Cameron had to do alone any- 
thing that she did n’t already know how to 
do. Now for the first time she faced an 
emergency on none but her own resources, 
88 


IN UNTRODDEN FIELDS 

an emergency that was quite out of her 
line. 

Her brain worked swiftly as her feet 
moved to the door. In reality, she had 
wavered only a second. When Tom went 
for the cows, didn’t he take old Prince? 
There was just a chance that Prince 
was n’t in the hay-field. She ran down 
the steps calling, “Prince ! Prince!” The 
old dog rose deliberately from his place 
on the shady side of the barn and trotted 
toward her, wagging his tail. “Come, 
Prince!” cried Elliott, and ran out of the 
yard. 

Luckily, berrying had that very morning 
taken her by a short cut to the vicinity 
of the upper meadow. She knew the 
way. But what was likely to happen? 
Town-bred girl that she was, she had no 
idea. A recollection of the smooth, up- 
standing expanse of the upper meadow 
gave her a clue. If the cows got into that 

89 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


even erectness — She began to run, 
Prince bounding beside her, his brown tail 
a waving plume. 

She could see the meadow now, a smooth 
green sea ruffled by nothing heavier than 
the light feet of the summer breeze. She 
could see the great gate invitingly open to 
the road and oh ! — her heart stopped beat- 
ing, then pounded on at a suffocating pace 
— she could see the cows! There they 
came, down the hill, quite filling the nar- 
row roadway with their horrid bulk, mak- 
ing it look like a moving river of broad 
backs and tossing heads. What could she 
do, the girl wondered; what could she do 
against so many ? She tried to run faster. 
Somehow she must reach the gate first. 
There was nothing even then, so far as she 
knew, to prevent their trampling her down 
and rushing over her into the waving 
greenness, unless she could slam the gate 
in their faces. You can see that she really 
did not know much about cows. 

90 


IN UNTRODDEN FIELDS 

But Prince knew them. Prince under- 
stood now why his master’s guest had 
summoned him to this hot run in the sun- 
shine. The prospect did not daunt Prince. 
He ran barking to the meadow side of 
the road. The foremost cow which, graz- 
ing the dusty grass, had strayed toward 
the gate, turned back into the ruts again. 
Elliott pulled the gate shut, in her haste 
leaving herself outside. There, too spent 
to climb over, she flattened her slender 
form against the gray boards, while, 
driven by Prince, the whole herd, horns 
tossing, tails switching, flanks heaving, 
thudded its way past. 

And there, three minutes later, Bruce, 
dashing over the hill in response to a mes- 
sage relayed by telephone and boy to the 
lower meadow, found her. 

“The cows have gone down,” Elliott told 
him. “Prince has them. He will take 
them home, won’t he?” 

“Prince ? Good enough ! He ’ll get the 
9i 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

cows home all right. But what are you 
doing in this mix-up ?” 

“A woman telephoned the house,” said 
Elliott. “I was afraid I couldn’t reach 
any of you in time, so I came over myself.” 

“You like cows?” The question shot 
at her like a bullet. 

The piquant nose wrinkled entrancingly. 
“Scared to death of ’em.” 

“I guessed as much.” The boy nodded. 
“Gee whiz, but you ’ve got good stuff in 
you !” 

And though her shoes were dusty and 
her hair tousled, and though her knees 
had n’t stopped shaking even yet, Elliott 
Cameron felt a sudden sense of satisfac- 
tion and pride. She turned and looked 
over the fence at the meadow. In its un- 
marred beauty it seemed to belong to her. 


92 


CHAPTER V 


A SLACKER UNPERCEIVED 

“T THINK,” remarked Elliott, the next 
morning, “that I will walk up and 
watch the haying for a while.” 

She had finished washing the separator 
and the milk-pans. It had taken a full 
hour the first morning; growing expert- 
ness had already reduced the hour to three- 
quarters, and she had hopes of further 
reductions. She still held firmly to the 
opinion that the process was uninteresting, 
but an innate sense of fairness told her 
that the milk-pans were no more than her 
share. Of course, she could n’t spend 
six weeks in a household whose component 
members were as busy as were this house- 
hold’s members, and do nothing at all. 
93 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

That was the disadvantage in coming to 
the place. She was bound to dissemble 
her feelings and wash milk-pans. But if 
she had to wash them, she might as well 
do it well. There was no question about 
that. If the actual process still bored the 
girl, the results did not. Elliott was 
proud of her pans, with a pride in which 
there was no atom of indifference. She 
scoured them until they shone, not because, 
as she told herself, she liked to scour, but 
because she liked to see the pans shine. 

Aunt Jessica liked to see them shine, too. 
She paused on her way through the 
kitchen. “What beautiful pans! I can 
see my face in every one of them.” 

A glow of elation struck through Elliott. 
Aunt Jessica was loving and sweet, but 
she did not lavish commendation in quar- 
ters where it was not due. Elliott knew 
her pans were beautiful, but Aunt Jes- 
sica’s praise made them doubly so. 

It was then, as she hung up her towels, 

94 


A SLACKER UNPERCEIVED 

that she made the remark about walking 
up to the hill meadow. She had a no- 
tion she would like to see the knives put 
into that unbroken expanse of tall grass 
for which she continued to feel a curious 
responsibility. A mere appearance at the 
field could not commit her to anything. 

“If you are going up,” said Aunt Jes- 
sica, “perhaps you will take some of these 
cookies I have just baked. Gertrude has 
made lemonade.” 

That was one of the delightful things 
about Aunt Jessica, Elliott thought: she 
never probed beneath the surface of one’s 
words, she never even looked curiosity, 
and she gave one immediately a reason for 
doing what one wished to do. Lemonade 
and cookies made an appearance in the 
hay-field the most natural thing in the 
world. 

The upper meadow proved a surprise. 
Not its business — Elliott had expected 
business, but its odd mingling of jollity 
95 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

with activity. They all seemed to be hav- 
ing such a good time about their work. 
And yet the jollity did not in the least in- 
terfere with the business, which appeared 
to be going forward in a systematic and 
efficient way that even an untrained girl 
could not fail to notice. Elliott’s advent 
would have occasioned little disturbance, 
she suspected, had it not been for the cook- 
ies. She was used by now to having no 
fuss made over her. Laura waved a hand 
from her seat behind the horses ; the boys 
swung their hats ; Priscilla darted over to 
display a ground-sparrow’s nest that the 
scythes had disclosed. 

It was Priscilla who discovered the 
cookies and sent a squeal of delight across 
the meadow. But even then the workers 
did not pause. Priscilla had to dance out 
across the mown grass and squeal again 
and wave both hands, a cooky in one, a 
cup in the other, and add a shrill little 
yelp, “Come on ! Come on, peoples ! You 
96 


A SLACKER UNPERCEIVED 


don't know what we 've got here/' before 
they straggled over to what Henry called 
“the refreshment booth.” 

Then they were ready enough to notice 
Elliott. Uncle Robert and the boys 
cracked jokes, the girls chattered and 
laughed, and every one called on her to 
applaud the amount of work they had al- 
ready accomplished, exactly as though she 
understood about such things. 

And Elliott did applaud, reinforcing her 
words with a whole battery of dimples, all 
the while privately resolving that no con- 
tagion of enthusiasm should inoculate her 
with the haymaking germ. There were 
factors that made it all a bit hard to with- 
stand ; the sky was so blue, the breeze was 
so jolly, the mown grass smelled so deli- 
cious, and the mountain air had such zest 
in it. But, on the other hand, the sun was 
hot and downright and freckling; Pris- 
cilla's tip-tilted little nose was already lib- 
erally besprinkled. If Laura had n't such 
97 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

a wonderful skin, she would have been a 
sight long ago, despite the wide brim of 
her big straw hat. A mere farm hat, and 
Laura looked like a mere husky farm girl, 
as she guided her horses skilfully around 
the field. How strong her arms must be ! 
But how could a girl with Laura’s intelli- 
gence and high spirit and charm enjoy 
putting all this time into haying? With 
Priscilla, of course, matters stood differ- 
ently. Children never discriminate. 

“No, I sha’n’t do that kind of thing,” 
said Elliott, firmly. But she would inves- 
tigate the haymaking game, investigate it 
coolly and dispassionately, to find out ex- 
actly what it amounted to — aside, of 
course, from an accumulation of dried 
grass in barns. To this end, she invaded 
the upper meadow a good many times, dur- 
ing the next few days, took a turn on the 
hay-rake, now and then helped load and 
unload, riding down to the barn on a 
mound of high-piled fragrance, and came 
98 


A SLACKER UNPERCEIVED 

to the conclusion that, as an activity, hay- 
making was n’t to be compared with knock- 
ing a ball back and forth across a net. To 
try one’s hand at it might do well enough, 
now and then, to spice an otherwise luxuri- 
ous life, but as a steady diet the thing was 
too unrelenting. One was driven by wind 
and sun; even the clouds took a hand in 
cudgeling one on. A person must keep at 
it whether she cared to or not — in actual 
practice this point never troubled Elliott, 
who always stopped when she wished to — 
there were no spectators, and, heaviest de- 
merit of all, it was undeniably hard work. 

But she was curious to discover what 
Laura found in it, and you know Elliott 
Cameron' well enough by this time to un- 
derstand that she was not a girl who hesi- 
tated to ask for information. 

The last load had dashed into the big 
red barn two minutes before a thunder- 
shower, and Laura, freshly tubbed and 
laundered, was winding her long black 
99 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

braids around her shapely little head. 
Elliott sat on the bed and watched her. 

“Are n’t you glad it ’s done?” she asked. 

“The haying? Oh, yes, I ’m always glad 
when we have it safely in. But I love it.” 

“Really? It isn’t work for girls.” 

“No? Then once a year I ’ll take a va- 
cation from being a girl. But that does n’t 
hold now, you know. Everything is work 
for girls that girls can do, to help win this 
war.” 

“To help win the war?” echoed Elliott, 
and blankly and suddenly shut her mouth. 
Why, she supposed it did help, after all! 
But it was their work, the kind of thing 
they had always done, up here at the Cam- 
eron Farm ; only, as Bruce had assured her, 
the girls hadn’t done much of it. Was 
that what Bruce had meant, too? 

“Why did you suppose we put so much 
more land under cultivation this year than 
we ever had before, with less help in 
sight?” Laura questioned. “Just for fun, 


ioo 


A SLACKER UNPERCEIVED 


or for the money we could get out of it?” 

“I had n't thought much about it,” said 
Elliott. She was thinking now. Had she 
been a bit of a slacker? She loathed 
slackers. 

“1 never thought of it as war work,” she 
said. “Stupid, was n't I?” 

Laura put the last hair-pin in place. 
“Just thought of it as our job, did you? 
So it is, of course. But when your job 
happens to be war work too — well, you 
just buckle down to it extra hard. I 've 
never been so thankful as this year and 
last that we have the farm. It gives every 
one of us such a splendid chance to feel 
we 're really counting in this fight — the 
boys over there and in camp, the rest of 
us here.” Laura's dark eyes were begin- 
ning to shine. “Oh, I would n't be any- 
where but on a farm for anything in the 
wide world, unless, perhaps, somewhere in 
France!” 

She stopped suddenly, put down the 


IOI 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

hand-mirror with which she was survey- 
ing her back hair, and blushed. “There !” 
she said, “I forgot all about the fact that 
you were n’t born on a farm, too. But 
then, you can share ours for a year, so I ’m 
not going to apologize for a word I ’ve 
said, even if I have been bragging because 
I ’m so lucky.” 

Bragging because she was lucky ! And 
Laura meant it. There was not the ghost 
of a pose in her frank, downright young 
pride. Her cousin felt like a person who 
has been walking down-stairs and tries to 
step off a tread that is n’t there. Elliott’s 
own cheeks reddened as she thought of the 
patronizing pity she had felt. Luckily, 
Laura had n’t seemed to notice it. And 
Laura was quick to see things, too. El- 
liott realized, with a little stab of chagrin, 
that Laura would n’t understand why her 
cousin had pitied her, even if some one 
should be at pains to explain the fact to 
her. 


102 


A SLACKER UNPERCEIVED 


But Elliott could n’t let herself pass as 
an intentional slacker. 

“We girls did canteening at home; sur- 
gical dressings and knitting, too, of course, 
but canteening was the most fun.” 

“That must have been fine.” Laura 
was interested at once. 

Elliott’s spirit revived. After all, 
Laura was a country girl. “Do you have 
a canteen here?” 

“Oh, no, Highboro is n’t big enough. 
No trains stop here for more than a min- 
ute. We ’re not on the direct line to any 
of the camps, either.” 

“Ours was a regular canteen,” said Elli- 
ott. “They would telephone us when sol- 
diers were going through, and we would 
go down, with Mrs. Royce or Aunt Mar- 
garet or some other chaperon, and dis- 
tribute post-cards and cigarettes and 
sweet chocolate; and ice-cream cones, if 
the weather was hot. It was such fun to 
talk to the men !” 


103 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


“Ice-cream and cigarettes !” laughed 
Laura. “I should think they ’d have liked 
something nourishing.” 

“Oh, they got the nourishing things, if it 
was time. The Government had an ar- 
rangement with a restaurant just around 
the corner to serve soldiers’ meals. We 
did n’t have to do that.” 

“You supplied the frills.” 

“Yes.” Somehow Elliott did not quite 
like the words. 

Laura was quick to notice her discom- 
fiture. “I imagine they needed the frills 
and the jollying, poor lonesome boys! 
They ’re so young, many of them, and not 
used to being away from home; and the 
life is strange, however well they may 
like it.” 

“Yes,” said Elliott. “More than one 
bunch told us they hadn’t seen anything 
to equal what we did for them this side of 
New York. Our uniforms were so be- 
coming, too; even a plain girl looked cute 
104 


A SLACKER UNPERCEIVED 


in those caps. Why, Laura, you might 
have a uniform, might n’t you, if it ’s war 
work?” 

“What should I want of a uniform?” 

“People who saw you would know what 
you ’re doing.” 

“They know now, if they open their 
eyes.” 

“They ’d know why, I mean — that it ’s 
war work.” 

“Mercy ! Nobody around here needs to 
be told why a person hoes potatoes these 
days. They ’re all doing it.” 

“Do you hoe potatoes ?” Elliott had no 
notion how comically her consternation sat 
on her pretty features. 

Laura laughed at the amazed face of her 
cousin. “Of course I do, when potatoes 
need hoeing.” 

“But do you like it?” 

“Oh, yes, in a way. Hoeing potatoes 
is n’t half bad.” 

Elliott opened her lips to say that it 

I0 5 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

was nT girls’ work, remembered that she 
had made that remark once before, and 
changed to, “It is hard work, and it is n’t 
a bit interesting.” 

Then Laura asked two questions that 
left Elliott gasping. “Don’t you like to do 
anything except what is easy ? Though I 
don’t know that it is any harder to hoe po- 
tatoes for an hour than to play tennis that 
length of time. And anything is interest- 
ing, don’t you think, that has to be done ?” 

“Goodness, no!” ejaculated Elliott, when 
she found her voice. “I don’t think that 
at all! Do you, really?” 

“Why, yes!” Laura laughed a trifle 
deprecatingly. “I ’m not bluffing. I 
never thought I ’d care to spray potatoes, 
but one day it had to be done, and Father 
and the boys were needed for something 
else. It was n’t any harder to do than 
churning, and I found it rather fun to 
watch the potato-bugs drop off. I calcu- 
lated, too, how many Belgians the potatoes 
106 


A SLACKER UNPERCEIVED 


in those hills would feed, either directly or 
by setting wheat free, you know. I for- 
get now how many I made it. I know I 
felt quite exhilarated when I was through. 
Trudy helped/’ 

“Goodness!” murmured Elliott faintly. 
For a minute she could find no other words. 
Then she managed to remark: “Of 
course every one gardens at home. They 
have lots at the country club, and raise 
potatoes and things, and you hear them 
talking everywhere about bugs and blight 
and cold pack. I never paid much atten- 
tion. It did n’t seem to be meant for girls. 
The men and boys raise the things and the 
wives and mothers can them. That ’s the 
way we do at home.” 

“Traditional,” nodded Laura. “We di- 
vide on those lines here to a certain extent, 
too; but we’re rather Jacks of all trades 
on this farm. The boys know how to can 
and we girls to make hay.” 

“The boys can?” 

107 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


“Tom put up all our string-beans 
last summer quite by himself. What does 
it matter who does a thing, so it ’s 
done?” 

Laura was dressed now, from the crown 
of her smooth black head to the tip of her 
white canvas shoes, and a very satisfactory 
operation she had made of it. Elliott dis- 
missed Laura’s last remark, which had not 
sounded very sensible to her — of course it 
mattered who did things ; why, that some- 
times was all that did matter! — and re- 
flected that, country bred though she was, 
her cousin Laura had an air that many a 
town girl might have envied. An ability 
to find hard manual work interesting did 
not seem to preclude the knowledge of how 
to put on one’s clothes. 

But Laura’s hands were not all that 
hands should be, by Elliott’s standard; 
they were well cared for, and as white as 
soap and water could make them, but there 
are some things that soap and water can- 
108 


A SLACKER UNPERCEIVED 


not do when it is pitted against sun and 
wind and contact with soil and berries and 
fruits. Elliott had n’t meant to look so 
fixedly at Laura’s hands as to make her 
thought visible, and the color rose in her 
cheeks when Laura said, exactly as though 
she were a mind-reader, “If you prefer 
lily-white fingers to stirring around doing 
things, why, you have to sit in a corner 
and keep them lily-white. I like to stick 
mine into too many pies ever to have them 
look well.” 

“They ’re a lovely shape,” said Elliott, 
seriously. 

And then, to her amazement, Laura 
laughed and leaned over and hugged her. 
“And you ’re a dear thing, even if you do 
think my hands are no lady’s !” 

Of course Elliott protested; but as that 
was just what she did think, her protes- 
tations were not very convincing. 

“You can’t have everything,” said 
Laura, quite as though she did n’t mind in 
109 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


the least what her hands looked like. The 
strangest part of it all was that Elliott be- 
lieved Laura actually did n’t mind. 

But she did n’t know how to answer her., 
Laura’s words had raised the dust on all 
those comfortable cushiony notions Elliott 
had had sitting about in her mind for so 
long that she supposed they were her very 
own opinions. Until the dust settled she 
could n’t tell what she thought, whether 
they belonged to her or had simply been 
dumped on her by other people. She 
could n’t remember ever having been in 
such a position before. 

Yes, Elliott found a good deal to think 
of. One had to draw the line somewhere; 
she had told herself comfortably; but lines 
seemed to be very queerly jumbled up in 
this war. If a person could n’t canteen 
or help at a hostess house or do surgical 
dressings or any of the other things that 
had always stood in her mind for girl’s 
war work, she had to do what she could, 
no 


A SLACKER UNPERCEIVED 


had n’t she? And if it was n’t necessary 
to be tagged, why, it was n’t. Laura in 
blouse and short skirt, or even in overalls, 
seemed to accomplish as much as any pos- 
sible Laura in a pantaloon suit or puttees 
or any other land uniform. There really 
did n’t seem any way out, now that Elliott 
understood the matter. Perhaps she had 
been rather dense not to understand it be- 
fore. 

“What would you like me to do this 
morning, Uncle?” she asked the next day 
at the breakfast-table. “I think it is time 
I went to work.” 

“Going to join the farmerettes?” 

“Thinking of it.” She could feel, with- 
out seeing, Stannard’s stare of astonish- 
ment. No one else gave signs of surprise. 
Stannard, thought the girl, really had n’t 
as good manners as his cousins. 

Uncle Bob surveyed the trim figure, ar- 
rayed in its dark smock and the shortest of 
all Elliott’s short skirts. If he felt other 


ill 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


than wholly serious he concealed the fact 
well. 

“The corn needs hoeing, both field-corn 
and garden-corn. How about joining that 
squad ?” 

“It suits me.” 

Corn — did n’t Hoover urge people to eat 
corn? In helping the corn crop, she too 
might feel herself feeding the Belgians. 

Gertrude linked her arm in her slender 
cousin’s as they left the table. “I ’ll show 
you where the tools are,” she said. 
“Harry runs the cultivator in the field, but 
we use hand-hoes in the garden.” 

“You will have to show me more than 
that,” said Elliott. “What does hoeing do 
to corn, anyhow ?” 

“Keeps down the weeds that eat up the 
nourishment in the soil,” recited Gertrude 
glibly, “and by stirring up the ground 
keeps in the moisture. You like to know 
the reason for things, too, don’t you? I ’m 
glad. I always do.” 


1 12 


A SLACKER UNPERCEIVED 

It was n't half bad, with a hoe over her 
shoulder, in company with other boys and 
girls, to swing through the dewy morning 
to the garden. Priscilla had joined the 
squad when she heard Elliott was to be in 
it, and with Stannard and Tom the three 
girls made a little procession. It proved 
a simple enough matter to wield a hoe. 
Elliott watched the others for a few min- 
utes, and if her hills did not take on as 
workmanlike an appearance as Tom’s and 
Gertrude’s, or even as Priscilla’s, they all 
assured her practice would mend the fault. 

“You ’ll do it all right,” Priscilla en- 
couraged her. 

“Sure thing!” said Tom. “We might 
have a race and see who gets his row done 
first.” 

“No races for me, yet,” said Elliott. 
“It would be altogether too tame. I ’d 
qualify for the booby prize without trying. 
But the rest of you may race, if you want 
to.” 


ii3 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

“Just wait!” prophesied Stannard 
darkly. “Wait an hour or two and see 
how you like hoeing.” 

Elliott laughed. In the cool morning, 
with the hoe fresh in her hand, she thought 
of fatigue as something very far away. 
Stan was always a little inclined to croak. 
The thing was easy enough. 

“Run along, little boy, to your row,” she 
admonished him. “Can’t you see that I ’m 
busy?” 

Elliott hoed briskly, if a bit awkwardly, 
and painstakingly removed every weed. 
The freshly stirred earth looked dark and 
pleasant; the odor of it was good, too. 
She compared what she had done with 
what she had n’t, and the contrast moved 
her to new activity. But after a time — it 
was not such a long time, either, though it 
seemed hours — she thought it would be 
pleasant to stop. The motion of the hoe 
was monotonous. She straightened up 
and leaned on the handle and surveyed her 
1 14 


A SLACKER UNPERCEIVED 


fellow-workers. Their backs looked very 
industrious as they bent at varying dis- 
tances across the garden. Even Stannard 
had left her behind. 

Gertrude abandoned her row and came 
and inspected Elliott’s. “That looks fine,” 
she said, “for a beginner. You must stop 
and rest whenever you ’re tired. Mother 
always tells us to begin a thing easy, not to 
tire ourselves too much at first. She won’t 
let us girls work when the sun ’s too hot, 
either.” 

Elliott forced a smile. If she had done 
what she wished to, she would have thrown 
down her hoe and walked off the field. 
But for the first time in her life she did n’t 
feel quite like letting herself do what she 
wished to. 

What would these new cousins think of 
her if she abandoned a task as abruptly as 
that? But what good did her hoeing do? 
— a few scratches on the border of this big 
garden-patch. It couldn’t matter to the 
US 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

Belgians or the Germans or Hoover or 
anybody else whether she hoed or did n’t 
hoe. Perhaps, if every one said that, even 
of garden-patches — but not every one 
would say it. Some people knew how 
to hoe. Presumably some people liked 
hoeing. Goodness, how long this row 
was! Would she ever, ever reach the 
end? 

Priscilla bobbed up, a moist, flushed 
Priscilla. “That looks nice. You have n’t 
got very far yet, have you? Never mind. 
Things go a lot faster after you ’ve done 
’em a while. Why, when I first tried to 
play the piano, my fingers went so slow, 
they just made me ache. Now they skip 
along real quick.” 

Elliott leaned on her hoe. “Do you play 
the piano?” 

“Oh, yes! Mother taught me. Good- 
by. I must get back to my row.” 

“Do you like hoeing?” Elliott called 
after her. 

116 


A SLACKER UNPERCEIVED 


“I like to get it done.” The small figure 
skipped nimbly away. 

“ 'Get it done !’ ” Elliott addressed the 
next clump of waving green blades, pessi- 
mism in her voice. "After one row, is n’t 
there another, and another, and another , 
forever?” She slashed into a mat of 
chickweed with venom. 

"I knew you ’d get tired,” said Stan- 
nard, at her elbow. "Come on over to 
those trees and rest a bit. Sun ’s getting 
hot here.” 

Elliott looked at the clump of trees on 
the edge of the field. Their shade invited 
like a beckoning hand. Little beads of 
perspiration stood on her forehead. A 
warm lassitude spread through her body, 
turning her muscles slack. Had n’t Ger- 
trude said Aunt Jessica didn’t let them 
work in too hot a sun? 

"You ’re tired; quit it!” urged Stannard. 

"Not just yet,” said Elliott, and her hoe 
bit at the ground again. 

ii 7 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

Tired ? She should think she was tired ! 
And she had fully intended to go with 
Stan. Then why had n’t she gone? The 
question puzzled the girl. Quit when you 
like and make it up with cajolery was a 
motto that Elliott had found very useful. 
She was good at cajolery. What made 
her hesitate to try it now? 

She swung around, half minded to call 
Stannard back, when a sentence flashed 
into her mind, not a whole sentence, just 
a fragment salvaged from a book some one 
had once been reading in her hearing: 
“This war will be won by tired men 
who — ” She could n’t quite get the rest. 
An impression persisted of keeping ever- 
lastingly at it, but the words escaped her. 
She swung back, her hail unsent. Well, 
she was tired, dead tired, and her back 
was broken and her hands were blistered, 
or going to be, but nobody would think of 
saying that that had anything to do with 
winning the war. Stay; wouldn’t they? 

118 


A SLACKER UNPERCEIVED 


It seemed absurd; but, still, what made 
people harp so on food if there were n’t 
something in it? If all they said was true, 
why — and Elliott’s tired back straightened 
— why, she was helping a little bit; or she 
would be if she did n’t quit. 

It may seem absurd that it had taken a 
backache to make Elliott visualize what 
her cousins were really doing on their 
farm. She ought, of course, to have been 
able to see it quite clearly while she sat 
on the veranda, but that is n’t always the 
way things work. Now she seemed to see 
the farm as part of a great fourth line of 
defense, a trench that was feeling all the 
other trenches and all the armies in the 
open and all the people behind the armies, 
a line whose success was indispensable to 
victory, whose defeat would spell failure 
everywhere. It was only for a minute 
that she saw this quite clearly, with a kind 
of illuminated insight that made her back- 
ache well worth while. Then the minute 
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THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


passed, and as Elliott bent to her hoe again 
she was aware only of a suspicion that 
possibly when one was having the most 
fun was not always when one was being 
the most useful. 

“Well,” said a pleasant voice, “how does 
the hoeing go?” 

And there stood Laura with a pitcher in 
her hand, and on her face a look — was it 
of mingled surprise and respect? 

“You must n’t work too long the first 
day,” she told Elliott. “You ’re not hard- 
ened to it yet, as we are. Take a rest now 
and try it again later on. I have your 
book under my arm.” 

When, that noon, they all trooped up to 
the house, hot and hungry, Elliott went 
with them, hot and hungry, too. Nobody 
thanked her for anything, and she did n’t 
even notice the lack. Farming was n’t like 
canteening, where one expected thanks. 
As she scrubbed her hands she noticed that 
her nails were hopeless, but her attention 


120 


A SLACKER UNPERCEIVED 

failed to concentrate on their demoralized 
state. Had n’t she finished her row ? 

“Stuck it out, did you?” said Bruce, as 
they sat down at dinner. “I bet you 
would.” 

“I should n’t have dared look any of you 
in the face again, if I had n’t,” smiled El- 
liott. But his words rang warm in her 
ears. 


12 1 


CHAPTER VI 


FLIERS 

L AURA and Elliott were in the sum- 
mer kitchen, filling glass jars with 
raspberries. As they finished filling each 
jar, they capped it and lowered it into a 
wash-boiler of hot water on the stove. 

“It seems odd,” remarked Laura, “to 
put up berries without sugar.” 

“Is n’t it horrid,” said Elliott, who had 
never put up berries at all, but who was 
longing for candy and had n’t had courage 
to suggest buying any. “I hope the Allies 
are going to appreciate all we are doing 
for them.” 

“Do you?” Laura looked at her oddly. 
“I hope we are going to appreciate all they 
have done for us.” 

“Aren’t we showing it?” Elliott felt 


122 


FLIERS 


really indignant at her cousin. “Think of 
the sacrifices we ’re making for them.” 

“Sacrifices?” 

How stupid Laura was ! “You know as 
well as I do how many things we are giv- 
ing up.” 

“Sugar, for instance?” queried Laura. 

“Sugar is one thing.” 

“Oh, well,” said Laura, “I ’d rather a 
little Belgian had my extra pounds, poor 
scrap! Of course, now and then I get 
hungry for it, though Mother gives us all 
the maple we want, but when I do get 
hungry, I think about the Belgians and 
the people of northern France who have 
lost their homes, and of all those children 
over there who have n’t enough to eat to 
make them want to play ; and I think about 
the British fleet and what it has kept us 
from for four years; and about the thou- 
sands of girls who have given their youth 
and prettiness to making munitions. I 
think about things like that and then I say 
123 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


to myself, 'My goodness, what is a little 
sugar, more or less!' Why, Elliott, we 
don’t begin to feel the war over here, not 
as they feel it !” 

Elliott, who considered that she felt the 
war a good deal, demurred. “I have lost 
my home,” she said, feeling a little 
ashamed of the words as she said them. 

"But it is there,” objected Laura. 
"Your home is all ready to go back to, 
is n’t it? That ’s my point.” 

"And there ’s Father,” said Elliott. 

"I know, and my brothers. But I don’t 
feel that I have done anything in their 
being in the army. It is doing them lots 
of good: every letter shows that. And, 
anyway, I ’d be ashamed if they did n’t 
g°” 

"Something might happen,” said Elliott. 
"What would you say then?” 

"The same, I hope. But what I mean 
is, the war does n’t really touch us in the 
routine of our every-day living. We don’t 
124 


FLIERS 


have to darken our windows at night and 
take, every now and then, to the cellars. 
The machinery of our lives is n’t thrown 
out of gear. We don’t live hand in hand 
with danger. But lots of us think we ’re 
killed if we have to use our brains a little, 
if we ’re asked to substitute for wheat 
flour, and can’t have thick frosting on our 
cake and eat meat three times a day. Oh, 
I ’ve heard ’em talk ! Why, our life over 
here is n’t really topsyturvy a bit !” 

“Is n’t it?” There were things, Elliott 
thought, that Laura, wise as she was, 
did n’t know. 

“We ’re inconvenienced,” said Laura, 
“but not hurt.” 

Elliott was silent. She was trying to 
decide whether or not she was hurt. In- 
convenienced seemed rather a slim verb 
for what had happened to her. But she 
did n’t go on to say what she had meant to 
say about candy, and she felt in her secret 
soul the least bit irritated at Laura. 

125 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

Then Priscilla whirled in on her tiptoes, 
her hands behind her back. “The post- 
man went right straight by, though I hung 
out the window and called and called. I 
guess he did n’t hear me, he ’s awful deaf 
sometimes.” 

“Didn’t I get a letter?” Elliott’s face 
fell. 

“Mail is slow getting through, these 
days,” said Aunt Jessica, coming in from 
the main kitchen. “We always allow an 
extra day or two on the road. Was n’t 
there anything at all from Bob or Sidney 
or Pete, Pris? You little witch, you cer- 
tainly are hiding something behind your 
back.” 

Then Priscilla gave a gay little squeal 
and jumped up and down till her black 
curls bobbed all over her face. When she 
stopped jumping she looked straight at 
Elliott. 

“Which hand will you take?” she 
asked. 


126 


FLIERS 

“I ? Oh, have you a letter for me, after 
all?” 

“You did n’t guess it,” said the child. 
“Which hand?” 

“The right — no, the left.” 

Priscilla shook her head. “You are n’t 
a very good guesser, are you? But I ’ll 
give it to you this time. It ’s not fat, but 
it looks nice. He did n’t even get out, that 
postman did n’t ; he just tucked the letter in 
the box as he rode along.” 

“Certain sure he did n’t tuck any other 
letter in too, Pris?” queried Laura. 

The child held out empty hands. 

“That ’s no proof. Your eyes are too 
bright.” Laura turned her around gently. 
“Oh, I thought so! Stuck in your dress. 
From Bob!” 

“Two,” squealed Priscilla, with an em- 
phatic little hop. “Here, give ’em to 
Mother. They ’re ’dressed to her. Now 
let ’s get into ’em, quick. Shall I ring the 
bell, Mother, to call in Father and the rest? 
127 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


Two letters from Bob is a great big emer- 
gency; don’t you think so? ” 

The words filtered negligently through 
Elliott’s inattention. All her conscious 
thoughts were centered on her father’s 
handwriting. She had had a cable before, 
but this was his first letter. It almost made 
her cry to see the familiar script and know 
that she could get nothing but letters from 
him for a whole long year. No hugs, no 
kisses, no rumpling of her hair or his, no 
confidential little talks — no anything that 
had been her meat and drink for years. 
How did people endure such separations? 
A big lump came up in her throat and the 
tears pricked her eyes; but she swallowed 
very hard and blinked once or twice and 
vowed, “I won’t cry, I won’t!” 

And then suddenly, through her pre- 
occupation, she became aware of a hush 
fallen on the bubbling expectancy of the 
room. Glancing up from the page, she 
saw Henry standing in the doorway. 

128 


FLIERS 


Even to unfamiliar eyes there was some- 
thing strangely arresting in the boy’s look, 
a shocked gravity that cut like a premoni- 
tion. 

“They say Ted Gordon ’s been killed,” 
he said. 

“Ted — Gordon!” cried Laura. 

“Practice flight, at camp. Nobody 
knows any particulars. Cy Jones told 
Father.” The boy’s voice sounded dry 
and hard. 

“Are they certain there is no mistake?” 
his mother asked quietly. 

“I guess it ’s true. Cy said the Gordons 
had a telegram.” 

“I must go over at once.” Mrs. Cam- 
eron rose, putting the letters into Laura’s 
hands, and took off her apron. 

“I ’ll bring the car around for you,” said 
Henry. 

“Thank you.” She smiled at him and 
turned to the girls. “You know what we 
are having for dinner, Laura. Priscilla 
129 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


will help make the shortcake, I ’m sure. 
I will be back as soon as I can.” 

Mutely the four watched the little car 
roll out of the yard and down the hill. 

Then Henry spoke. “Letters?” 

“From Bob,” said Laura. 

“Did she read ’em?” 

Laura shook her head. 

“Gee !” said the boy. 

“Perhaps she thought she couldn’t,” 
hesitated Laura, “and go over there.” 

A moment of silence held the room. 
Henry broke it. “Well, we ’re not going. 
Let ’s hear ’em.” 

Elliott took a step toward the door. 

“Need n’t run away unless you want to,” 
he called after her. “We always read 
Bob’s letters aloud.” 

So Elliott stayed. Laura’s pleasant 
voice, a bit strained at first, grew steadier 
as the reading proceeded. Henry sat 
whittling a stick into the coal-hod, his lips 
pursed as though for a whistle, but with- 
130 


FLIERS 


out sound, and still with that odd sober 
look on his face. Priscilla, all the jumpi- 
ness gone out of her, stood very still in the 
middle of the kitchen floor, a kind of hurt 
bewilderment in the big dark eyes fixed on 
Laura’s face. Nobody laughed, nobody 
even chuckled, and yet it was a jolly letter 
that they read first, full of spirit and 
life and fun. High-hearted adventure 
rollicked through it, and the humor that 
makes light of hardship, and the latest 
slang of the front adorned its pages with 
grotesquely picturesque phrases. The 
Cameron boys were obviously getting a 
good time out of the war. Bob had got 
something else, too. The letter had been 
delayed in transmission and near the end 
was a sentence, “Brought down my first 
Hun to-day — great fight ! I ’ll tell you 
about it next time if after due deliberation 
I decide the censor will let me.” 

“Some letter !” commented Henry. 
“Say, those aviators are living like princes, 

131 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

are n’t they ! Mess hall in a big grove 
with all the fixings. And eats! More 
than we get at home. Gee, I wish I was 
older!” 

“So you could come in for the eats?” 
smiled his sister. 

“So I could come in for things gener- 
ally.” 

“You could n't work any harder if you 
were a man grown,” she told him. 

“Huh!” said Henry, “a lot I hurt my- 
self!” But he liked the smile and the 
praise, wary though he might pretend to 
be of it. Sis was a good sort. “You ’re 
some worker, yourself. Let ’s get on to 
the next one.” 

The second letter — and it too bore a date 
disquietingly far from the present — told 
of the fight. It thrilled the four in the 
pleasant New England kitchen. The 
peaceful walls opened wide, and they were 
out in far spaces, patrolling the windy sky, 
mounting, diving, dodging through wisps 
132 


FLIERS 


of cloud, kings of the air, hunting for 
combat. Their eyes shone and their 
breathing quickened, and for a minute 
they forgot the boy who was dead. 

“Why the Hun did n’t bag me, instead 
of my getting him,” wrote Bob, “is a mys- 
tery. Just the luck of beginners, I guess. 
I did most of the things I should n’t have 
done, and, by chance, one or two of the 
things I should — fired when I was too far 
off, went into a spinning nose-dive under 
the mistaken notion it would make me a 
poor target, etc., etc., etc. Oh, I was 
green, all right ! He knew how to maneu- 
ver, that Hun did. That ’s what feazes 
me. How did I manage to top him at last ? 
Well, I did. And my gun did n’t jam. 
Nufif said.” 

“Gee!” said Henry between his teeth. 
“And Ted Gordon had to go and miss all 
that! Gee!” 

“If he had only got to the front !” sighed 
Laura. 


133 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


“Anything from Pete?’' asked the boy. 

“No.” 

“Sid?” 

She shook her head. “We had a letter 
from Sid day before yesterday, you know.” 

“Sid lays ’em down pretty thick some- 
times. Well, I must be getting on. This 
is n’t weeding cabbages.” 

The three girls, left alone, reacted each 
in her own way to the touch of the dark 
wings that had so suddenly brushed the 
rim of their blithe young lives. Priscilla 
frankly did n’t understand, but her sensi- 
tive spirit felt the chill of the event, and 
her big eyes gazed with a tinge of wonder 
at the blue sky and sunshine of the world 
outside. 

“Seems sort of queer it ’s so bright,” she 
remarked. 

Laura was busy, as were thousands of 
sisters at that very minute and every min- 
ute all over the land, scotching the fears 
that are always lying in wait, ready to lift 
134 


FLIERS 


their ugly heads. Queer the letters had 
come through so tardily ! Where was 
Bob, her darling big brother, this minute? 
Where was Pete Fearing, hardly less dear 
than Bob? Pictures clicked through her 
brain, pictures built on newspaper prints 
that she had seen. But one died twice 
that way, she reflected, and it did no good. 
So she put the letters on the shelf beside 
the clock and brought out the potatoes for 
dinner. 

“Ted Gordon was in the Yale Battery 
last summer/' she remarked. “He came 
up from camp to get his degree this year. 
Mrs. Gordon and Harriet went down. He 
was Scroll and Key." 

In Elliott’s brain Laura's words made a 
swift connection. Before that, Ted Gor- 
don had meant nothing to her, the name of 
a boy whom she had never seen, a country 
lad, whose death, while sudden and sad, 
could not touch her. Now, suddenly, he 
clicked into place in her own familiar 
135 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


world. A Scroll-and-Key man? Why, 
those were the men she knew — Bones, 
Scroll and Key, Hasty Pudding — he was 
one of them ! 

She felt a swift recoil. So that was 
what war came to. Not just natty figures 
in khaki that girls cried over in saying 
good-by to, or smiled at and told how per- 
fectly splendid they were to go; not just 
high adventure and martial music and the 
rhythm of swinging brown shoulders ; not 
just surgical dressings and socks and 
sweaters; not even just homes broken up 
for a time and fathers sailing overseas. 
Of course one understood with one’s 
brain, that made part of the thrill of their 
going, but one did n’t realize with the feel- 
ing part of one — how could a girl ? — when 
they went away or when one made dress- 
ings. Yet didn’t dressings more than 
anything else point to it? And Laura 
had said we did n’t feel the war over 
here! 


136 


FLIERS 


A sense of something intolerable, not 
to be borne, overwhelmed Elliott. She 
pushed at it with both hands, as though by 
the physical gesture she could shove away 
the sudden darkness that had blotted with 
alien shadow the face of her familiar sun. 
Death ! There was an unbearable un- 
pleasantness about death. She had always 
felt ill at ease in its presence, in the 
very mention of its name; she had avoided 
every sign and symbol of it as she 
would a plague. And now, she foresaw 
for an instant of blinding clarity, per- 
haps it could not be avoided any longer. 
Was this young aviator’s accident 
just a symbol of the way death was go- 
ing to invade all the happy sheltered 
places ? The thought turned the girl 
sick for a minute. How could Laura 
go on with her work so unfeelingly? 
And there was Priscilla getting out 
raspberries. 

“I don’t see,” said Elliott, and her voice 
137 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

choked, “I don’t see how you can bear to 
peel those potatoes!” 

“Some one has to peel them,” said 
Laura. “The family must have dinner, 
you know. We could n’t work without 
eating. Besides, I think it helps to work.” 

Elliott brushed the last sentence aside. 
It fell outside her experience, and she 
did n’t understand it. The only thing she 
did understand was the reiteration of 
work, work, and the pall of blackness that 
overshadowed her hitherto bright world. 
She wished again with all her heart that 
she had never come to Vermont. She 
did n’t belong here ; why could n’t she have 
stayed where she did belong, where people 
understood her, and she them? 

A great wave of homesickness swept 
over the girl, homesickness for the world 
as she had always known it, her world as 
it had been before the war warped and 
twisted and spoiled things. And yet, 
oddly enough, there was no sense in the 

138 


FLIERS 


Cameron house of anything being spoiled. 
They talked of Ted Gordon in the same 
unbated tone of voice in which they spoke 
of her cousin Bob or of his friend Pete 
Fearing, and they actually laughed when 
they told stories about him. Laura baked 
and brewed, and the results disappeared 
down the road in the direction Mother Jess 
had taken. Aunt Jessica herself returned, 
a trifle pale and tired-looking, but smiling 
as usual. 

“Lucinda and Harriet are just as brave 
as you would expect them to be,” Elliott 
heard her tell Father Bob. “No one knows 
yet how it happened. They hope to learn 
more from Ted’s friends. Two of the 
aviators are coming up. Harriet told me 
they rather look for them to-morrow 
night.” 

Hastily Elliott betook herself out of 
hearing. She wanted to get beyond sight 
and sound of any reference to what had 
happened. It was the only way known to 
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THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


her to escape the disagreeable — to turn her 
back on it and run away. What she 
did n’t see and think about, so far as she 
was concerned, was n’t there. Hitherto 
the method had worked very well. What 
disquieted her now was a dull, persistent 
fear that it was n’t going to work much 
longer. 

So when Bruce remarked the next day, 
“I ’m going to take part of the afternoon 
off and go for ferns; want to come?” she 
answered promptly, “Yes, indeed,” though 
privately she thought him crazy. Ferns, 
on a perfectly good working-day? But 
when they were fairly started, she found 
she had n’t escaped, after all. Instead, she 
had run right into the thing, so to speak. 

“We want to make the church look 
pretty,” Bruce said, as they tramped 
along. “And I happen to know where 
some beauties grow, maidenhair and the 
rarer sorts. It is n’t everybody I ’d dare 
to take along.” 

140 


FLIERS 

“Is that so?” queried the girl. She 
wondered why. 

“Things have a way of disappearing in 
the woods, unless they ’re treated right. 
Took a fellow with me once when I went 
for pink-and-white lady’s-slippers, the big 
ones — they ’re beauties. He was crazy to 
go, and he promised to keep the place to 
himself. You could have picked bushels 
there then. Now they ’re all cleaned out.” 

“But why? Did people dig them up?” 

“Picked ’em too close. Some things 
won’t stand being cleaned up the way most 
people clean up flowers in the woods. 
They ’re free, and nobody ’s responsible.” 

In spite of her thoughts Elliott dimpled. 
“I think it is quite safe to take me.” 

He grinned. “Maybe that ’s why I do 
it.” 

It was very pleasant, tramping along 
with Bruce in the bright day ; pleasant, too, 
leaving the sunshine for the spicy coolness 
of the woods, and climbing up, up, among 
141 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

great tree-trunks and mossy rocks and 
trickling mountain brooks. Or it would 
have been pleasant, if one could only have 
forgotten the reason that underlay their 
journey. But when they had reached 
Bruce's secret spot and were cutting the 
wiry brown stems, and packing together 
carefully the spreading, many-fingered 
fronds so as not to break 'the delicate 
ferns, that undercurrent of numb conster- 
nation reasserted itself. Like Priscilla, 
Elliott felt a little shocked at the brightness 
of the sunshine, the blueness of the sky, 
and the beauty of the fern-filled glade. 

“It was dreadful for him to be killed 
before he had done anything!" At last 
the words so long burning in her heart 
reached the tip of her tongue. 

“Yes.” Bruce's voice was sober. “It 
sure was hard." 

“I should think his people would feel as 
though they could n't stand it !" Elliott 
declared. “If he had got to France — but 
142 



Cutting the wiry brown stems in the fern-filled glade 


















■ 


. 












































• • 















FLIERS 


now it is just a hideous, hideous waste !” 

Bruce hesitated. “I suppose that is one 
way of looking at it.” 

“Why, what other way could there be?” 
She stared at him in surprise. “He was 
just learning to fly. He had n’t done any- 
thing, had he?” 

“No, he had n’t done anything. But 
what he died for is just the same as though 
he had got across, is n’t it, and had downed 
forty Huns?” 

She continued to stare fixedly at the boy 
for a full minute. “Why, yes,” she said 
at last, very slowly; “yes, I suppose it is.” 
Curiously enough, the whole thing looked 
better from that angle. 

For a long time she was silent, cutting 
and tying up ferns. 

“How did you happen to think of that?” 

“To think of what?” Bruce was tying 
his own ferns. 

“What you said about — about what this 
Ted Gordon died for.” 

143 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

It was Bruce's turn to look surprised. 
“I did n't think of anything. It 's just a 
fact, is n’t it?" 

Then he began to load himself with 
ferns. Elliott would n’t have supposed 
any one could carry as many as Bruce 
shouldered; he had great bunches in his 
hands, too. 

“You look like a walking fernery," she 
said. 

“Birnam Wood," he quoted and for a 
minute she could n’t think what he meant. 
“Better let me take some of those on the 
ground," he said. 

“No, indeed! I am going to do my 
share." 

Quietly he possessed himself of two of 
her bunches. “That ’s your share. It 
will be heavy enough before we get home." 

It was heavy, though not for worlds 
would Elliott have mentioned the fact. 
She helped Bruce put the ferns in water, 
and she went out at night and sprinkled 
144 


FLIERS 


them to keep them fresh; but she had an 
excuse ready when Laura asked if she 
would like to go over to the little white- 
spired church on the hill and help arrange 
them. 

Nothing would have induced her to at- 
tend the services, either, though afterward 
she wished that she had. There seemed to 
have been something so high and fine and 
— yes — so cheerful about them, so martial 
and exalted, that she wished she had seen 
for herself what they were like. In El- 
liott’s mind gloom had always been insep- 
arably linked with a funeral, gloom and 
black clothes. Whereas Laura and her 
mother and Gertrude and Priscilla wore 
white. A good many things at the Cam- 
eron farm were very odd. 

It was after every one had gone to bed 
and the lights were out that Elliott lay 
awake in her little slant-ceilinged room and 
worried and worried about Father, three 
thousand miles away. He was n’t an avi- 
145 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


ator, it was true, but in France was n’t the 
land almost as unsafe as the air? She 
had imagined so many things that might 
perfectly easily happen to him that she was 
on the point of having a little weep all by 
herself when Aunt Jessica came in. Did 
she know that Elliott was homesick? 
Aunt Jessica sat down on the bed, as she 
had sat that first night, and talked about 
comforting, commonplace things — about 
the new kittens, and how soon the corn 
might be ripe, and what she used to do 
when she was a girl in Washington. El- 
liott got hold of her hand and wound her 
own fingers in and out among Aunt Jes- 
sica’s fingers, but in the end she spoke out 
the thing that was uppermost in her mind. 

“Mother Jess,” she said, using uncon- 
sciously the Cameron term; “Mother Jess. 
I don’t like death.” 

She said it in a small, wabbly voice, be- 
cause she felt very strongly and she was n’t 
used to talking about such things. But 
146 


FLIERS 


she had to say it. Though if the room 
had n’t been dark, I doubt if she could have 
got it out at all. 

“No, dear,” said Aunt Jessica, quietly. 
“Most of us don’t like death. I wonder if 
your feeling is n’t due to the fact that you 
think of it as an end?” 

“What is it,” asked Elliott, “but an 
end?” She was so astonished that her 
words sounded almost brusque. 

“I like to think of it as a coming alive,” 
said Aunt Jessica, “a coming alive more 
vigorously than ever. The world is be- 
ginning to think of it so, too.” 

Elliott lay still after Aunt Jessica had 
gone out of the room and tried to think 
about what she had said. It was quite the 
oddest thing that anybody had said yet. 
But all she really succeeded in thinking 
about was the quiet certainty in Aunt Jes- 
sica’s voice, the comforting clasp of Aunt 
Jessica’s arms, and the kiss still warm on 
her lips. 


147 


CHAPTER VII 


PICNICKING 

“ T FEEL like a picnic/’ said Mother Jess, 
1 “a genuine all-day-in-the-woods pic- 
nic.” 

It was rather queer for a grown-up to 
say such a thing right out like a girl, Elli- 
ott thought, but she liked it. And Aunt 
Jessica was sitting back on her heels, just 
like a girl too, looking up from the border 
where she was working. Elliott had 
caught sight of her blue chambray skirt 
under a haze of blue larkspurs and had 
come over to see what she was doing. It 
proved to be weeding with a clawlike thing 
that, wielded by Aunt Jessica’s right hand, 
grubbed out weeds as fast as she could toss 
them into a basket with her left. Elliott 
was surprised. Weeding a flower-bed 
148 


PICNICKING 


when, as she happened to know, the garden 
beets were n't finished did not square with 
her notions of what was what on the Cam- 
eron farm. She was so surprised that she 
answered absently, “That sounds fine. I 
think I feel so, too," and kept on wonder- 
ing about Aunt Jessica. 

“We usually have a picnic at this time of 
year when the haying is done," said that 
lady, and fell again to her weeding. “It 
is astonishing how fast a weed can grow. 
Look at that !" and she held up a spreading 
mat of green chickweed. “I have had to 
neglect the borders shamefully this sum- 
mer." 

Elliott squatted down beside her and 
twined her fingers in a tuft of grass. 
“May I help?" She gave a little tug to 
the grass. 

“Delighted to have you. Look out! 
That ’s a Johnny-jump-up." 

“Is it? Goodness! I thought it was a 
weed!" 


149 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

“Here is one in blossom. Spare 
Johnny. He is a faithful friend till the 
winter snows.” 

“Johnny-jump-up.” Elliott’s laughter 
gurgled over the name. “But he does 
rather jump up, does n’t he? Funny little 
pansy thing ! Funny name, too.” 

“Not so odd as a few others I know. 
Kiss-me-in-the-buttery, for instance.” 

“Not really!” 

“Honest Injun, as Priscilla says.” 

“These borders are sweet.” The girl 
let her gaze wander up and down the curv- 
ing lines of color splashed across the gentle 
slope of the hill. “But flowers don’t stand 
much chance in a war year, do they? I 
know people at home who have plowed 
theirs up and planted potatoes.” 

“A mistake,” said Aunt Jessica, shaking 
the dirt vigorously from a fistful of sorrel. 
“A mistake, unless it is a question of life 
and death. We have too much land in this 
country to plow up our flowers, yet a while. 

150 


PICNICKING 


And a war year is just the time when we 
need them most. No, I never feel I am 
wasting my time when I work among 
flowers.” 

“But they ’re not necessary , are they?” 
questioned Elliott. “Of course, they ’re 
beautiful; but I thought luxuries had to go, 
just now.” 

“Flowers a luxury? Oh, my dear little 
girl, put that notion out of your head 
quickly ! American-beauty roses may be a 
luxury, and white lilacs in the dead of win- 
ter, but garden flowers, never! Wait till 
you see the daffodils dancing under those 
apple trees next spring!” And she nod- 
ded up the grassy slope at the apple trees 
as though she and they shared a delightful 
secret that Elliott did not yet know. 

Privately the girl held a different opin- 
ion about next spring, but she wondered 
why Aunt Jessica should talk of daffodils. 
They seemed rather lugged into a conver- 
sation in July. 

151 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

Mother Jess reached with her clawlike 
weeder far into the border. Her voice 
came back over her shoulder in little gusts 
of words as she worked. “Did you ever 
hear that saying of the Prophet? — ‘He 
that hath two loaves let him sell one and 
buy a flower of the narcissus ; for bread is 
food for the body, but narcissus is food 
for the soul/ That ’s the way I feel about 
flowers. They are the least expensive 
way of getting beauty and we can't live 
without beauty, now less than ever, since 
they have destroyed so much of it in 
France. There! now I must stop for to- 
day. Don’t you want to take this culling- 
basket and pick it full of the prettiest 
things you can find for Mrs. Gordon? 
Perhaps you would like to take it over to 
her, too. It is n’t a very long walk.” 

“But I ’ve never met her.” 

“That won’t matter. Just tell her who 
you are and that you belong to us. Mrs. 

152 


PICNICKING 


Gordon loves flowers, though she has n’t 
much time to tend them. ,, 

“I should n’t think any one could have 
less time than you.” 

Aunt Jessica laughed. “Oh, I make 

timer 

Elliott picked up the flat green basket, 
lifted the shears she found lying in it, and 
went hesitatingly up and down the bor- 
ders. “What shall I pick?” 

“Anything. Suit yourself. Make the 
basket as pretty as you can. If you pick 
here and there, the borders won’t show 
where you cut from them.” 

Mother Jess gathered up gloves and 
tools, and went away, tugging her basket 
of weeds. Elliott, left behind, surveyed 
the borders critically. To cut without let- 
ting it appear that she had cut was evi- 
dently what Aunt Jessica wanted. She 
reached in and snipped off a spire of lark- 
spur from the very back of the border, 
then stood back to see what had happened. 
153 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


No, if one had n't known the stalk had been 
there, one would n’t now know it was gone. 
The thing could be done, then. Cau- 
tiously she selected a head of white phlox. 
The result of that operation also was satis- 
factory. 

Up and down the flowery path she went, 
snipping busily. On the stalks of larkspur 
and phlox she laid a mass of pink snap- 
dragons and white candytuft, tucking in 
here and there sprays of just-opening 
baby’s-breath to give a misty look to the 
basket. A bunch of English daisies came 
next; they blossomed so fast one didn’t 
have to pick and choose among them ; one 
could just cut and cut. And ought n’t 
there to be pansies ? “Pansies — that ’s for 
thoughts.” Those wonderful purple ones 
with a sprinkling of the yellow — no, yellow 
would spoil the color scheme of the basket. 
These white beauties were just the thing. 
How lovely it all looked, blue and white 
and pink and purple ! 

154 


PICNICKING 


But there was n’t much fragrance. 
Eye and nose searched hopefully. Helio- 
trope ! — just a spray or two. There, now 
it was perfect. Anybody would be glad to 
see a basket like that coming. Only, she 
did wish some one else were to carry it, or 
else that she knew the people. It might 
not be so bad if she knew the people. 
Why shouldn’t Laura or Trudy take it? 
Elliott walked very slowly up to the house, 
debating the question. A week ago she 
would n’t have debated ; she would have 
said, “Oh, I can’t possibly.” Or so she 
thought. 

“How beautiful!” said Aunt Jessica’s 
voice from the kitchen window. “You 
have made an exquisite thing, dear.” 

Elliott rested the basket on the window 
ledge and surveyed it proudly. “Is n’t it 
lovely ? And I don’t think cutting this has 
hurt the borders a bit.” 

“I am sure not.” Aunt Jessica’s busy 
hands went back to her yellow mixing- 
155 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


bowl. “You know where the Gordons 
live, don't you ? — in the big brick house at 
the cross-roads." 

“Yes," said Elliott, and her feet carried 
her out of the yard, stopping only long 
enough to let her get her pink parasol from 
the hall, and down the hill toward the 
cross-roads. It was odd about Elliott's 
feet, when she had n't quite made up her 
mind whether or not she would go. Her 
feet seemed to have no doubt of it. 

The pink parasol threw a becoming light 
on her face, as she knew it would, and the 
odor of heliotrope rose pleasantly in her 
nostrils as she walked along. But the bas- 
ket grew heavy, astonishingly heavy. She 
would n’t have believed a culling-basket 
with a few flowers in it could weigh so 
much. The farther Elliott walked, the 
heavier it grew. And she had n't gone a 
quarter of the way, either. 

A horse's feet coming up rapidly behind 
156 


PICNICKING 


her turned the girl’s steps to the side of 
the road. The horse drew abreast and 
stopped, prancing. “Want a lift?” asked 
the man in the wagon. He was a big griz- 
zled farmer, a friend of her uncle’s. 

Elliott nodded, smiling. “Oh, thank 
you!” 

“Purty flowers you ’ve got there.” 

“Aren’t they lovely! Aunt Jessica is 
sending them to Mrs. Gordon.” 

“That ’s right ! That ’s right ! Say, 
just look at them pansies, now! Flowers, 
they don’t do nothin’ but grow for that 
aunt of yours. She don’t have to much 
more ’n look at ’em.” 

Elliott laughed. “She weeds them, I 
happen to know. I helped her this after- 
noon.” 

“Did you, now! But there’s a differ- 
ence in folks. Take my wife: she plants 
’em and plants ’em, but she can’t keep none. 
They up and die on her, sure thing.” 

157 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


Elliott selected a purple pansy. “This 
looks to me as though it would like to get 
into your buttonhole, Mr. Blair. ,, 

“Sho, now !" He flushed with pleasure, 
driving slowly as the girl fitted the pansy 
in place, a bit of heliotrope nestling beside 
it. “Smells good, don't it? Mother al- 
ways had heliotrope in her garden. Takes 
me back to when I was a little shaver." 

Elliott's deft fingers were busy with the 
English daisies. 

“Now don’t you go and spoil your bas- 
ket." 

“No, indeed! see what a lot there are 
left. Here is a little nosegay for your 
wife. And thank you so much for the 
lift." 

He cranked the wheel and she jumped 
out, waving her hand as he drove on. 
Queer a man like that should love flowers ! 

It was only when she was walking up 
the graveled path to the door of the brick 
house that she remembered to compose her 

158 


PICNICKING 


face into a proper gravity. She felt nerv- 
ous and ill at ease. But she need n't go 
in, she reminded herself, just leave the 
flowers at the door. If only there were a 
maid, which there probably was n't ! One 
could n’t count for certain on getting right 
away from these places where the people 
themselves met one at the door. 

'‘How do you do?" said a voice, advanc- 
ing from the right. “What a lovely bas- 
ket!" 

Elliott jumped. She was ready to jump 
at anything and she had been looking 
straight ahead without a single glance 
aside from a non-committal brick front. 
Now she saw a hammock swung between 
two trees, a hammock still swaying from 
the impact of the girl who had just left it. 

She was the biggest girl Elliott had ever 
seen, tall and fat and shapeless and very 
plain. She was all in white, which made 
her look bigger, and her skirt was at least 
three years old. There was a faint trickle 
159 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

of brown spots down the front of it, too, 
of which the girl seemed utterly unaware. 

“You don’t have to tell me where those 
flowers come from,” she said. “You are 
Laura Cameron’s cousin, aren’t you? 
Glad to know you.” 

“Yes,” said Elliott, “I am Elliott Cam- 
eron. Aunt Jessica sent these to your 
mother.” 

The girl’s fingers felt cool and firm as 
they touched Elliott’s, the only pleasant im- 
pression she had yet gathered. 

“They look just like Mrs. Cameron. 
Sit down while I call Mother. Oh, she ’s 
not doing anything special. Mother !” 

Elliott, conducted through the house to 
a wide veranda, sank into a chair, con- 
scious in every nerve of her own slender 
waist line. What must it feel like to be so 
big? A minute later she seemed to her- 
self to be engulfed between two mountains 
of flesh. A woman — more unwieldy, 
more shapeless, more oppressive even than 
160 


PICNICKING 


the girl — waddled across the veranda 
floor. What she said Elliott really did n’t 
know; afterward phrases of pleasure came 
back to her vaguely. She distinctly re- 
membered the creaking of the rocking- 
chair when the woman sat down and her 
own frightened feeling lest some vital part 
should give way under the strain. 

After a time, to her consciousness, mild 
blue eyes emerged from the mass of hu- 
man bulk that fronted her; gray hair 
crinkled away from a broad white fore- 
head. Then she perceived that Mrs. Gor- 
don was not a very tall woman, not so 
tall as was her daughter. If anything, 
that made it worse, thought Elliott. Why, 
if she fell down, no one could tell which 
side up she ought to go — except, of course, 
head side on top. The idea gave her a 
hysterical desire to giggle. The fact that 
it would be so dreadful to laugh in this 
house made the desire almost uncontrol- 
able. 


161 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


And then the big girl did laugh about 
something or other, laughed simply and 
naturally and really pleasantly. Elliott 
almost jumped again, she was so startled. 
To her, there was something repulsive in 
the sight of so much human flesh. At the 
same time it discouraged her. In the pres- 
ence of these two she felt insignificant, 
even while she pitied them. She wished to 
get away, but instinctive breeding held her 
in her chair, chatting. She hoped what 
she said was n’t too inane ; she did n’t know 
quite what she did say. 

Just then suddenly Harriet Gordon 
asked a question: “Has your aunt said 
anything yet about a picnic this summer?” 

“I heard her say this afternoon that she 
felt just like one,” said Elliott. 

Mother and daughter looked at each 
other triumphantly. “What did I tell 
you!” said one. “I thought it was about 
time,” said the other. 

“Jessica Cameron always feels like a 
162 


PICNICKING 


picnic in midsummer,” Mrs. Gordon ex- 
plained. “After the haying ’s done. You 
tell her my little niece will want to go. 
Alma has been here three weeks and we 
have n’t been able to do much for her. 
Do you think you will go, too, Harriet ?” 

“I ’d rather not this time, Mother.” 

“The Bliss girls will probably go, and 
Alma knows them pretty well. She won’t 
be lonesome.” 

“Oh, no,” said Elliott, “we will see that 
she is n’t lonely.” 

“Must you go? Tell Mrs. Cameron we 
will send our limousine whenever she says 
the word.” On the way back through the 
house Harriet Gordon paused before the 
picture of a young man in aviator’s uni- 
form. “My brother,” she said simply, 
and there was infinite pride in her voice. 

Elliott stumbled down the path to the 
road. She quite forgot to put up the pink 
parasol. She carried it closed all the way 
home. Were they limousine people? 

163 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


You would never have guessed it to look 
at them. Why, she knew about picnics 
of that kind ! — motor-car, luncheon-kit 
picnics! But what a shame to be so big! 
Couldn't they do something about it? 
Good as gold, of course, and in such terri- 
ble sorrow ! They were n't unfeeling. 
The girl's voice when she said, “My 
brother," proved that. It seemed as 
though knowing about them ought to make 
them attractive, but somehow it did n't. 
If they only understood how to dress, it 
would help matters. Queer, how nice 
boys could have such frumpy people! 
And Ted Gordon had been a perfectly nice 
boy. The picture proved that. But Aunt 
Jessica had been right about the flowers. 
The big woman and the farmer proved 
that. Altogether Elliott's mind was a 
queer jumble. 

“She said she 'd send back the basket 
to-morrow, Aunt Jessica," she reported. 
“Said she wanted to sit and look at it for a 
164 


PICNICKING 


while just as it was. And Miss Gordon 
asked me to tell you that whenever you 
were ready for the picnic you must let her 
know and she would send around their 
limousine.” 

“If that is n’t just like Harriet Gordon !” 
laughed Laura. “She is the wittiest girl ! 
Did n’t you like her, Elliott?” 

Elliott’s eyes opened wide. “What is 
there witty in saying she would send their 
limousine?” 

Tom snorted. “Wait till you see it!” 

“Why, she meant their hay- wagon! 
We always use the Gordon hay-wagon for 
this midsummer picnic. That ’s a cus- 
tom, too.” 

Everybody laughed at the expression on 
Elliott’s face. 

“Not up on the vernacular, Lot?” gibed 
Stannard. 

“When is the picnic to be, Mother?” 
asked Laura. 

“How about to-morrow?” 

165 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

“Better make it the day after,” Father 
Bob suggested, and they all fell to dis- 
cussing whom to ask. 

So far as Elliott could see they asked 
everybody except townspeople. The tele- 
phone was kept busy that night and the 
next morning in the intervals of Mother 
Jess’s and the girls’ baking. Elliott 
helped pack up dozens of turnovers and 
cookies and sandwiches and bottled quarts 
of lemonade. 

“The lemonade is for the children,” said 
Laura. “The rest of us have coffee. 
Don’t you love the taste of coffee that you 
make over a fire that you build yourself in 
the woods?” 

“On picnics I have always had my 
coffee out of a thermos bottle,” said 
Elliott. 

“Oh, you poor thing ! Why, you 
have n’t had any good times at all, have 
you?” 

Laura looked so shocked that for a min- 
166 


PICNICKING 


ute Elliott actually wondered whether she 
ever really had had any good times. Pri- 
vately she was n’t at all sure that she was 
going to have a good time now, but she 
kept still about that doubt. 

“Are n’t you afraid it may rain to-mor- 
row?” she asked. 

“No, indeed! It never rains on things 
Mother plans.” 

And it did n’t. The morning of the pic- 
nic dawned clear and dewy and sparkling, 
as perfect a summer day as though it had 
been made to the Camerons’ order. By 
nine o’clock the big hay-wagon had ap- 
peared, driven by Mr. Gordon himself, 
who said he was going to turn over the 
reins to Mr. Cameron when they reached 
the Gordon farm. Two more horses were 
hitched on and all the Camerons piled in, 
with enough boxes and baskets and bags 
of potatoes, one would think, to feed a 
small town, and away the hay-wagon went 
down the hill, stopping at house after 
167 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


house to take in smiling people, with more 
boxes and baskets and bags. \ 

It was all very care-free and gay, and 
Elliott smiled and chattered away with 
the rest; but in her heart of hearts she 
knew that there was n’t one of these boys 
and girls who squeezed into the capacious 
hay-wagon to whom she would have given 
a second glance, before coming up here 
to Vermont. Now she wondered whether 
they were all as negligible as they looked. 
And pretty soon she forgot that she had 
ever thought they looked negligible. It 
was the jolliest crowd she had ever been 
in. One or two were a bit quiet when 
they arrived, but soon even the shyest were 
talking, or at least laughing, in the midst 
of the happy hubbub. It seemed as 
though one could n’t have anything but a 
good time when the Camerons set out to 
be jolly. Alma Gordon and the little 
Bliss girls were the last to squeeze in and 
they rode away waving their hands vio- 
168 


PICNICKING 


lently to a short, fat woman and a tall, fat 
girl, who waved briskly from the brick 
house’s front door. 

Then Mr. Cameron turned the horses 
into a mountain road and they began to 
climb. Up and up the wagon went with 
its merry load, through towering woods 
and open pastures and along hillsides 
where the woods had been cut and a tangle 
of underbrush was beginning to spring up 
among the stumps. And the higher the 
horses climbed the higher rose the jollity 
of the hay-wagon’s company. The sun 
was hot overhead when they stopped. 
There were gray rocks and a tumbling 
mountain brook and a brown-carpeted pine 
wood. Everybody jumped out helter- 
skelter and began unloading the wagon or 
gathering fire-wood or dipping up water, 
or simply scampering around for joy of 
stretching cramped legs. 

It was surprising how soon a fire was 
burning on the gray stones and coffee bub- 
169 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

bling in the big pail Mother Jess had 
brought; surprising, too, how good bacon 
tasted when you broiled it yourself on a 
forked stick and potatoes that you 
smooched your face on by eating them in 
their skins, black from the hot ashes that 
the boys poked them out of with green 
poles. Elliott knew now that she had 
never really picnicked before in her life 
and that she liked it. She liked it so much 
that she ate and ate and ate until she 
could n’t eat another mouthful. 

Perhaps she ate too much, but I doubt 
it. It is much more likely to have been 
the climb that she took in the hot sunshine 
directly after that dinner, and the climb 
would n't have hurt her, if she had ended 
the dinner without that last potato and the 
extra turnover and two cookies; or if she 
had rested a little before the climb. But 
perhaps, it was n’t either the dinner or 
the climb; it may have been the pink ice- 
cream of the evening before; or that time 
170 


PICNICKING 


in the celery patch, the previous morning, 
when she had forgotten her hat and 
would n’t go back to the house for it be- 
cause Henry had n’t a hat on, and why 
should a girl need a hat more than a boy? 
Or it may have been all those things put to- 
gether. She certainly had had a slight 
headache when she went to bed. 

Whatever caused it, the fact was that on 
the ride home Elliott began to feel very 
sick. The longer she rode the sicker she 
felt and the more appalled and ashamed 
and frightened she grew. What could be 
going to happen to her ? And what awful 
exhibition was she about to make of her- 
self before all these people to whom she 
had felt so superior? 

Before long people noticed how white 
she was and by the time the wagon reached 
the brick house at the cross-roads poor 
Elliott hardly cared if they did see it. Her 
pride was crushed by her misery. Mrs. 
Gordon and Harriet came out to welcome 
171 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

Alma home and they hesitated not a min- 
ute. 

“Have them bring her right in here, 
Jessica. No, no, not a mite of trouble! 
We ’ll keep her all night. You go right 
along home, you and Laura. Mercy me, 
if we can’t do a little thing like this for you 
folks ! She ’ll be all right in the morning.” 

The words meant nothing to Elliott. 
She was quite beyond caring where she 
went, so that it was to a bed, flat and still 
and unmoving. But even in her distress 
she was conscious that, whatever came of 
it, she had had a good time. 


172 


CHAPTER VIII 


A BEE STING 

E LLIOTT was wretchedly, miserably 
ill. She despised herself for it 
and then she lost even the sensation of 
self-contempt in utter misery. She did n't 
care about anything — who helped her un- 
dress or where the undressing was done 
or what happened to her. Mercifully no- 
body talked; it would have killed her, she 
thought, to have to try to talk. They 
did n't even ask her how she felt. They 
only moved about quietly and did things. 
They put her to bed and gave her some- 
thing to drink, after which for a time she 
didn’t care if she did die; in fact, she 
rather hoped she would ; and then the dis- 
gusting things happened and she felt worse 
173 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


and worse and then — oh wonder ! — she be- 
gan to feel better. Actually, it was sheer 
bliss just to lie quiet and feel how com- 
fortable she was. 

“I am so sorry !” she murmured apolo- 
getically to a presence beside the bed. “I 
have made you a horrid lot of trouble.” 

“Not a bit,” said the presence, quietly. 
“So don’t you begin worrying about that.” 

And she did n’t worry. It seemed im- 
possible to worry about anything just 
then. 

“I feel lots better,” she remarked, after 
a while. 

“That ’s right. I thought you would. 
Now I ’m going to telephone your Aunt 
Jessica that you feel better, and you just 
lie quiet and go to sleep. Then you will 
feel better still. I ’ll put the bell right here 
beside the bed. If you want anything, 
tap it.” 

The presence waddled away — the girl 
could feel its going in the tremor of the bed 
174 


A BEE STING 


beneath her — and Elliott out of half-shut 
eyes looked into the room. The shades 
were partially drawn and the light was 
dim. A little breeze fluttered the white 
scrim curtain. The girl’s lazy gaze trav- 
eled slowly over what she could see without 
moving her head. To move her head 
would have been too much trouble. What 
she saw was spotless and clean and coun- 
trified, the kind of room she would have 
scorned this morning; now she thought it 
the most peaceful place in the world. But 
she did n’t intend to go to sleep in it. She 
meant merely to lie wrapped in that de- 
licious mantle of well-being and continue 
to feel how utterly content she was. It 
seemed a pity to go to sleep and lose con- 
sciousness of a thing like that. 

But the first thing she knew she was 
waking up and the room was quite dark 
and she felt comfortable, but just the least 
bit queer. It could n’t be that she was 
hungry ! 


175 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


She lay and debated the point drowsily 
until a streak of light fell across the bed. 
The light came from a kerosene lamp in 
the hands of an immense woman whose 
mild blue eyes beamed on Elliott. 

“There, you ’ve waked up, have n’t you ? 
I guess you ’ll like a glass of milk now. 
You can bring it right up, Harriet. She ’s 
awake.” 

The woman set down her lamp on a lit- 
tle table and lumbered about the room, 
adjusting the shades at the windows, while 
the lamp threw grotesque exaggerations on 
the wall. Elliott watched the shadows, a 
warm little smile at her heart. They 
were funny, but she found herself tender 
toward them. When the woman padded 
back to the bed the girl smiled, her cheek 
pillowed on her hand. She liked her 
there beside the bed, her big shapeless 
form totally obscuring the straight-backed 
chair. She did n’t think of waist lines or 
clothes at all, only of how comfortable 
176 


A BEE STING 


and cushiony and pleasant the large face 
looked. Mothery — might not that be the 
word for it? Somehow like Aunt Jessica, 
yet without the slightest resemblance ex- 
cept in expression, a kind of radiating 
lovingness that warmed one through and 
through, and made everything right, no 
matter how wrong it might have seemed. 

“I telephoned your Aunt Jessica/’ said 
the big woman. “She was just going to 
call us, and they all sent their love to you. 
Here ’s Harriet with the milk. Do you 
feel a mite hungry?” 

“I think that must be what was the mat- 
ter with me. I was trying to decide when 
you came in.” 

The fat form shook all over with silent 
laughter. It was fascinating to watch 
laughter that produced such a cataclysm 
but made no sound. Elliott forgot to 
drink in her absorption. 

“Mother,” said Harriet Gordon, “El- 
liott thinks you ’re a three-ringed circus. 
1 77 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

You must n’t be so exciting till she has fin- 
ished her milk.” 

Elliott protested, startled. “I think you 
are the kindest people in the world, both 
of you!” 

“Mercy, child, anybody would have done 
the same ! Don’t you go to setting us up 
on pedestals for a little thing like that.” 

. The fat girl was smiling. “Make it 
singular, mother. I have no quarrel with 
a pedestal for you, though it might be a 
little awkward to move about on.” 

Mrs. Gordon shook again with that 
fascinating laughter. “Mercy me ! I ’d 
tip off first thing and then where would we 
all be?” 

Elliott’s eyes sought Harriet Gordon’s. 
If she had observed closely she would 
have seen spots on the white dress, but 
to-night she was not looking at clothes. 
She only thought what a kind face the big 
girl had and how extraordinarily pleasant 
her voice was and what good friends she 
178 


A BEE STING 


and her mother were, just like Laura and 
Aunt Jessica, only different. 

‘There !” said Mrs. Gordon. “You 
drank up every drop, didn’t you? You 
must have been hungry. Now you go 
right to sleep again and I ’ll miss my guess 
if you don’t feel real good in the morn- 
ing.” 

“Good night,” said Harriet from the 
door. “Did you give Blink her good-night 
mouthful, Mother?” 

“No, I did n’t. How I do forget that 
cat l” said Mrs. Gordon. She turned 
down the sheet under Elliott’s chin, patted 
it a little, and asked, “Don’t you want your 
pillow turned over?” Then quite nat- 
urally she stooped down and kissed the 
girl. “I guess you ’re all right now. 
Good night.” And Elliott put both arms 
around her neck and hugged her, big as 
she was. “Good night,” she said softly. 

The next time Elliott woke up it was 
broad daylight. Her eyes opened on a 
179 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

framed motto, “God is Love,” and she had 
to lie still and think a full minute before 
she could remember where she was and 
why she was there at all. Then she smiled 
at the motto — it was n’t the kind of thing 
she liked on walls, but to see it there did 
not make her feel in the least superior this 
morning — and jumped out of bed. As 
Mrs. Gordon had prophesied, she felt well, 
only the least bit wabbly. Probably that 
was because it was before breakfast — her 
breakfast. She had a disconcerting fear 
that it might be long long after other peo- 
ple’s breakfasts and for the first time in 
her life she was distressed at making trou- 
ble. Hitherto it had seemed right and 
normal for people to put themselves out 
for her. 

She dressed as quickly as she could and 
went down-stairs. Harriet was shelling 
peas on the big veranda that looked off 
across the valley to the mountains. There 
180 


A BEE STING 

must have been rain in the night, for the 
world was bathed clean and shining. 

“Mother said to let you sleep as long as 
you would.” Harriet stopped the current 
of apology on Elliott’s lips. “Did you 
have a good night?” 

“Splendid ! I did n’t know a thing from 
the time your mother went out of the room 
until half an hour ago.” 

“Did n’t know anything about the thun- 
der-shower?” 

“Was there a thunder-shower?” 

“A big one. It put our telephone out of 
commission.” 

“I did n’t hear it,” said Elliott. 

“It almost pays to be sick, to find out 
how good it feels to be well, does n’t it ? 
Here ’s a glass of milk. Drink that while 
I get your breakfast.” 

“Can’t I do it? I hate to make you 
more trouble.” 

“Trouble? Forget that word! We 
181 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


like to have you here. It is good for 
Mother. Gives her something to think 
about. Can’t you spend the day?” 

Now, Elliott wanted to get home at 
once ; she had been longing ever since she 
woke up to see Mother Jess and Laura and 
Father Bob and Henry and Bruce and 
everybody else on the Cameron farm, not 
omitting Prince and the chickens and the 
“black and whitey” calf ; but she thought 
rapidly: if it really made things any eas- 
ier for the Gordons to have her here — 

“Why, yes, I can stay if you want me 
to.” It cost her something to say those 
words, but she said them with a smile. 

“Good! I’ll telephone Mrs. Cameron 
that we will bring you home this afternoon. 
I ’ll go over to the Blisses’ to do it, though 
maybe their telephone ’s knocked out, too. 
The one at our hired man’s house is n’t 
working. Here comes Mother with an 
egg the hen has just laid for your break- 
fast.” 


182 


A BEE STING 

“Just a-purpose,” said Mrs. Gordon. 
“It ’s warm yet and marked 'Elliott Cam- 
eron’ plain as daylight. Is my hair full of 
straw, Harriet ?” 

“It is, straw and cobwebs. Where have 
you been, Mother? You know you 
have n’t any business in the haymow or 
crawling under the old carryall. Why 
don’t you let Alma bring in the eggs? 
She ’s little and spry.” 

“Pooh!” said Mrs. Gordon, with one of 
her silent laughs. “Pooh, pooh! Alma 
is n’t any match for old Whitefoot yet. 
You ’d think that hen laid awake nights 
thinking up outlandish places to lay her 
eggs in. Wait till you get to be sixty, 
Harriet. Then you ’ll know you can’t let 
folks wait on you. Before that it ’s all 
right, but after sixty you ’ve got to do for 
yourself, if you don’t want to grow old. — 
Two, dearie? I ’m going to make you a 
drop-egg on toast for your breakfast.” 

“Oh, no, one!” cried Elliott. “I never 

183 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


eat two. And can’t I help? I hate to 
have you get my breakfast.” 

“Why, yes, you can dish up your oat- 
meal,” calmly cracking a second egg. 
“ ’T won’t do a mite of harm to have two. 
Maybe you ’re hungrier than you think. 
Now Harriet, the water, and we ’re all 
ready. I ’ll help you finish those peas 
while she eats.” 

The woman and the girl shelled peas, 
their fat fingers fairly flying through the 
pods, while Elliott devoured both eggs and 
a bowl of oatmeal and a pitcher of cream 
and a dish of blueberries and wondered 
how they could make their fingers move so 
fast. 

“Practice,” said Mrs. Gordon in answer 
to the girl’s query. “You do a thing over 
and over enough times and you get so 
you can’t help doing it fast, if you ’ve got 
any gumption at all. The quarts of peas 
I ’ve shelled in my life time would feed an 
army, I guess.” 


A BEE STING 


“Don’t you ever get tired?” 

“Tired of shelling peas? Land no, I 
like it ! I can sit in here and look at you, 
or out on the back piazza and watch the 
mountains, or on the front step and see 
folks drive by, and I ’ve always got my 
thoughts.” A shadow crossed the placid 
face. “My thoughts work better when 
my fingers are busy. I ’d hate to just sit 
and hold my hands. Ted dared me once 
to try it for an hour. That was the long- 
est hour I ever spent.” 

Mrs. Gordon had risen to peer through 
the window after a rapidly receding 
wagon. 

“There!” she said. “There goes that 
woman from Bayfield I want to sell some 
of my bees to. She ’s going down to 
Blisses’ and I ’d better walk right over 
and talk to her, as the telephone won’t 
work. I ’most think one hive is going to 
swarm this morning, but I guess I ’ll have 
time to get back before they come out. 

185 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


Hello, Johnny, how do you do to-day ?” 

“All right,” lisped the small solemn-eyed 
urchin who had strayed in from the 
kitchen and now stood in the door hitch- 
ing at a diminutive pair of trousers and 
eying Elliott absorbedly. “Gone !” he an- 
nounced suddenly; coming out of his scru- 
tiny. 

“What, your button?” Harriet pulled 
him up to her. “I ’ll sew it on in a jiffy. 
Don’t worry about the bees, Mother. I 
can manage them, if they decide to swarm 
before you get back, and while you ’re at 
the Blisses’ just telephone central our 
phone’s out of order — and oh, please tell 
Mrs. Cameron we ’re keeping Elliott till 
afternoon.” 

Mrs. Gordon departed and Harriet 
sewed on the button. “There, Johnny, now 
you ’re all right. You can run out and 
play.” 

But Johnny became suddenly galvanized 
into action. He dived into a small pocket 
1 86 


A BEE STING 

and produced a note, crumpled and soiled, 
but still legible. 

“If that is n’t provoking!” said Harriet, 
when she had read it. “Why did n’t you 
give me this the first thing, Johnny? Then 
Mother could have done this telephoning, 
too, at the Blisses’.” 

“What is it?” asked Elliott. 

“A message Johnny’s mother wants 
sent. She ’s our hired man’s wife and I 
must say at times she shows about as much 
brains as a chicken. You ’d think she ’d 
know our ’phone would n’t be likely to 
work, if hers did n’t. Now I shall have to 
go over to the Blisses’ myself, I suppose. 
The message seems fairly important. 
Where has your mother gone, Johnny?” 

But Johnny didn’t know; beyond a 
vague “she wided away” he was noncom- 
mittal. 

“She might have stopped somewhere 
and telephoned for herself, I should 
think,” grumbled Harriet. “I ’ll be back 

187 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


in a few minutes. Or will you come, too? 
If I can’t ’phone from the Blisses’ I may 
have to go farther.” 

“I ’ll stay here, I think, and wash up 
my dishes. And after that I ’ll finish the 
peas.” 

“Mercy me, I shan’t be gone that long! 
We ’re shelling these to put up, you know. 
Don’t bother about washing your dishes, 
either. They ’ll keep.” 

“Who ’s saying bother, now ?” Elliott’s 
dimples twinkled mischievously. 

Harriet laughed. “You and Johnny 
can mind the place. The men and Alma 
are all off at the lower farm and here goes 
the last woman. Good-by.” 

Elliott went briskly about her program. 
She found soap and a pan and rinsed her 
dishes under the hot-water faucet. Then 
she sat down to the peas. Johnny, who 
had followed her about for a while, de- 
serted her for pressing affairs of his own 
out-of-doors. Elliott pinched the pods as 
1 88 


A BEE STING 

scientifically as she knew how and won- 
dered whether, if she should shell peas all 
her life, her slender fingers would ever 
acquire the lightning nimbleness of the 
Gordons’ fat ones. How long Harriet 
was gone ! 

She was thinking about this when she 
heard something that made her first stop 
her work to listen and then jump up hur- 
riedly, spilling the peas out of her lap. 
The wailing of a terrified child was com- 
ing nearer and nearer. Elliott set down 
the peas that were left and ran out on the 
veranda. There was Johnny stumbling 
up the path, crying at the top of his lungs. 

“Why, Johnny!” She ran toward him. 
“Why, Johnny, what is the matter?” 

Johnny precipitated himself into her 
arms in a torrent of tears. Not a word 
was distinguishable, but his wails pierced 
the girl’s ear-drums. 

“Johnny! Johnny, stop it! Tell me 
where you ’re hurt.” 

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THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


But Johnny only sobbed the harder. 
He could n’t be in danger of death — could 
he ? — when he screamed so. That 
showed his lungs were all right, and his 
legs worked, too, and his arms. They 
were digging into her now, with a force 
that almost upset her equilibrium. Could 
something be wrong inside of him? 

“What’s the matter, Johnny? Stop 
crying and tell me.” 

Johnny’s yells slackened for want of 
breath. He held up one brown little hand. 
She inspected it. Dirty, of course, un- 
speakably, but otherwise — Oh, there was a 
bunch on one knuckle, a bunch that was 
swelling. “Is that where it hurts you, 
Johnny?” 

Johnny nodded, gulping. 

“Did something sting you?” 

“Bee stung Johnny. Naughty bee !” 

The girl stared at the small grimy hand 
in consternation. A bee sting ! What 
did you do for a bee sting or any kind of 
190 


A BEE STING 


a sting for that matter? Mosquitoes — 
hamamelis. And where did the Gordons 
keep their hamamelis bottle? 

Johnny’s screams, abated in expectation 
of relief, began to rise once more. He 
was angry. Why did n’t she do some- 
thing? This delay was unendurable. 
His voice mounted in a long, piercing wail. 

“Don’t cry,” the girl said nervously. 
“Don’t cry. Let ’s go into the house and 
find something.” 

Up-stairs and down she trailed the 
shrieking child. At the Cameron farm 
there were two hamamelis bottles, one in 
the bath-room, the other on a shelf in the 
kitchen. But nothing rewarded her 
search here. If only some one were at 
home ! If only the telephone were n’t out 
of order ! Desperately she took down the 
receiver, to be greeted by a faint, continu- 
ous buzzing. There was nothing for it; 
she must leave Johnny and run to a neigh- 
bor’s. But Johnny refused to be left. He 
191 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

clung to her and kicked and screamed for 
pain and the terror of finding his secure 
baby world falling to pieces about his 
ears. 

“It ’s a shame, Johnny. I ought to 
know what to do, but I don’t. You come 
too, then.” 

But Johnny refused to budge. He 
threw himself on his back on the veranda 
and beat the floor with his heels and wailed 
long heart-piercing wails that trembled 
into sobbing silence, only to begin all over 
with fresh vigor. Elliott was at her wits’ 
end. She did n’t dare go away and leave 
him ; she was afraid he might kill himself 
crying. But might n’t he do so if she 
stayed? He pushed her away when she 
tried to comfort him. There was only one 
thing that he wanted ; he would have none 
of her, if she did n’t give it to him. 

Never in her life had Elliott Cameron 
felt so insignificant, so helpless and fu- 
tile, as she did at that minute. “Oh, you 
192 


A BEE STING 


poor baby!” she cried, and hated herself 
for her ignorance. Laura would have 
known what to do; Harriet Gordon would 
have known. Would nobody ever come? 

“What ’s the matter with him?” The 
question barked out, brusque and sharp, 
but never had a voice sounded more wel- 
come in Elliott Cameron’s ears. She 
turned around in joyful relief to encounter 
a pair of gimlet-like black eyes in the face 
of an old woman. She was an ugly little 
old woman in a battered straw hat and a 
shabby old jacket, though the day was 
warm, and a faded print skirt that was 
draggled with mud at the hem. Her hair 
strayed untidily about her face and un- 
fathomable scorn looked out of her snap- 
ping black eyes. 

“It ’s a — a bee sting,” stammered the 
girl, shrinking under the scorn. 

“Hee-hee-hee !” The old woman’s 
laughter was cracked and high. “What 
kind of a lummux are you? Don’t know 
193 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

what to do for a bee sting! Hee-hee! 
Mud, you gawk you, mud !” 

She bent down and slapped up a hand- 
ful of wet soil from the edge of the fern 
bed below the veranda. “Put that on 
him,” she said and went away giggling a 
girl’s shrill giggle and muttering between 
her giggles : “Don’t know what to do for 
a bee sting. Hee-hee!” 

For a whole minute after the queer old 
woman had gone Elliott stood there, star- 
ing down at the spatter of mud on the 
steps, dismay and wrath in her heart. 
Then, because she did n’t know anything 
else to do and because Johnny’s screams 
had redoubled, she stooped, and with 
gingerly care picked up the lump of black 
mud and went over to the boy. Mud 
could n’t hurt him, she thought, put on out- 
side; it certainly couldn’t hurt him, but 
could it help? 

She sat down on the floor and lifted 
the little swollen fist and held the cool mud 
194 


A BEE STING 


on it, neither noticing nor caring that some 
trickled down on her own skirt. She sat 
there a long time, or so it seemed, while 
Johnny’s yells sank to long-drawn sobs 
and then ceased altogether as he snuggled 
forgivingly against her arm. And in her 
heart was a great shame and an aching 
feeling of inadequacy and failure. Elliott 
Cameron had never known so bitter a five 
minutes. All her pride and self-suffi- 
ciency were gone. What was she good for 
in a practical emergency? Just nothing 
at all. She did n’t know even the com- 
monest things, not the commonest. 

“It must have been Witless Sue,” said 
Aunt Jessica, late that afternoon, when El- 
liott told her the story. “She is a half- 
witted old soul who wanders about dig- 
ging herbs in summer and lives on the 
town farm in winter. There ’s no harm in 
her.” 

“Half-witted !” said Elliott. “She knew 
more than I did.” 


195 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


“You have not had the opportunity to 
learn.” 

“That did n’t make it any better for 
Johnny. Laura knows all those things, 
does n’t she? And Trudy, too?” 

“I think they know what to do in the 
simpler emergencies of life.” 

“I wish I did. I took a first-aid course, 
but it did n’t have stings in it, not as far as 
we ’d gone when I came away. We were 
taught bandaging and using splints and 
things like that.” 

“Very useful knowledge.” 

“But Johnny got stung,” said Elliott, as 
though nothing mattered beyond that 
fact. “Do you think you could teach me 
things, now and then, Aunt Jessica? the 
things Laura and Trudy know?” 

“Surely,” said Aunt Jessica, “and very 
gladly. There are things that you could 
teach Laura and Trudy, too. Don’t for- 
get that entirely.” 

196 


A BEE STING 


“Could I ? Useful things ?” She asked 
the question with humility. 

“Very useful things in certain kinds of 
emergency. What did Mrs. Gordon do 
for Johnny when she got home ?” 

“Oh, she washed his hand and soaked 
it in strong soda and water, baking-soda, 
and then she bound some soda right on, for 
good measure, she said.” 

“There!” said Aunt Jessica. “Now 
you know two things to do for a bee sting.” 

Elliott opened her eyes wide. “Why, so 
I do, don’t I? I truly do.” 

“That ’s the way people learn,” said 
Mother Jess, “by emergencies. It is the 
only way they are sure to remember. 
Laura is helping Henry milk. Suppose 
you make us some biscuit for supper, El- 
liott.” 

Elliott started to say, “I Ve never made 
biscuit,” but shut her lips tight before the 
words slipped out. 


197 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

“1 will tell you the rule. You ’d better 
double it for our family. Everything is 
plainly marked in the pantry. Perhaps 
the fire needs another stick before you be- 
gin.” 

Carefully the girl selected a stick from 
the wood-box. “J ust let me get my apron, 
Aunt Jessica,” she said. 


CHAPTER IX 


ELLIOTT ACTS ON AN IDEA 

S IX weeks later a girl was busy in the 
sunny white kitchen of the Cameron 
farm. The girl wore a big blue apron 
that covered her gown completely from 
neck to hem, and she hummed a little song 
as she moved from sink to range and 
range to table. There was about her a 
delicate air of importance, almost of ela- 
tion. You know as well as I where Elli- 
ott Cameron ought to have been by this 
time. Six weeks plus how many other 
weeks was it since she left home? The 
quarantine must have been lifted from her 
Uncle James’s house for at least a month. 
But the girl in the kitchen looked surpris- 
ingly like Elliott Cameron. If it was n’t 
199 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


she, it must have been her twin, and I 
have never heard that Elliott had a twin. 

Though she was all alone in the kitchen 
— washing potatoes, too — she did n’t ap- 
pear in the least unhappy. She went over 
to the stove, lifted a lid, glanced in, and 
added two or three sticks of wood to the 
fire. Then she brought out a pan of 
apples and went down cellar after a roll 
of pie crust. Some one else may have 
made that pie crust. Elliott took it into 
the pantry, turned the board on the 
flour barrel, shook flour evenly over 
it from the sifter, and, cutting off 
one end of the pie crust, began to roll 
it out thin on the board. She arranged 
the lower crust on three pie-plates, and, 
going into the kitchen again, began to peel 
the apples and cut them up into the pies. 
Perhaps she was n’t so quick about it as 
Laura might have been, but she did very 
well. The skin fell from her knife in 
long, thin, curly strips. After that she 
200 



“I’m getting dinner all by myself” 


























ELLIOTT ACTS ON AN IDEA 

finished the pies off in the pantry and 
tucked all three into the oven. Squatting 
on her feet in front of the door, she studied 
the dial intently for a moment and hesi- 
tatingly pushed the draft just a crack 
open. If it had n’t been for that mo- 
mentary indecision, you might have 
thought that she had been baking pies all 
her life. Then she began to peel the 
potatoes. 

So it was that Stannard found her. 
“Hello!” he said, with a grin. “Busy?” 

“Indeed, I am ! I ’m getting dinner all 
by myself.” 

He went through a pantomime of dodg- 
ing a blow. “Whew-ee ! Guess I ’ll take 
to the woods.” 

“Better not. If you do, you will miss a 
good dinner. Mother Jess said I might 
try it. Boiled potatoes and baked fish — 
she showed me how to fix that — and corn 
and things. There ’s one other dish 
on my menu that I ’m not going to tell 
201 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

you.” And all her dimples came into 
play. 

“H’m!” said Stannard, “we feel pretty 
smart, don’t we? Well, maybe I’ll stay 
and see how it pans out. A fellow can 
always tighten his belt, you know.” 

“Are n’t you horrid !” She made up a 
face at him, a captivating little grimace 
that wrinkled her nose and set imps of 
mischief dancing in her eyes. 

Stannard watched her as with firm mo- 
tions she stripped the husks from the 
corn, picking off the clinging strands of 
silk daintily. 

“Gee, Elliott !” he exclaimed. “Do you 
know, you ’re prettier than ever !” 

She dropped him a courtesy. “I must 
be, with a smooch of flour on my nose and 
my hair every which way.” 

Fie grinned. “That ’s a story. Your 
hair looks as though Madame What-’s- 
her-name, that you and Mater and the 
girls go to so much, had just got through 
202 


ELLIOTT ACTS ON AN IDEA 

with you. I ’ve never seen you when you 
didn’t look as though you had come out 
of a bandbox.” 

“Have n’t you ? Think again, Stan, 
think again! What about your Cousin 
Elliott in a corn-field?” 

Stannard slapped his thigh. “That ’s 
so, too ! I forgot that. But your hair ’s 
all to the good, even then.” 

“Stan,” warned Elliott, “you ’d better 
be careful. You will get in too deep to 
wade out, if you don’t watch your step. 
What are you getting at, anyway? Why 
all these compliments?” 

“Compliments ! A fellow does n’t have 
to praise up his cousin, does he? It just 
struck me, all of a sudden, that you look 
pretty fit.” 

“Thanks. I ’m feeling as fit as I look. 
Out with it, Stan ; what do you want ?” 

“Why, nothing,” said Stannard, “noth- 
ing at all. Shall I take out those husks, 
Lot?” 


203 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


“Delighted. The pigs eat ’em.” Her 
eyes held a quizzical light. “If you ’re 
trying to rattle me so I shall forget some- 
thing and spoil my dinner, you can't do 
it." 

“What do you take me for?" He de- 
parted with the husks, deeply indignant. 

In five minutes he was back. “When 
are you going home?" 

“I don’t know. Not just yet. Your 
mother has too many house parties." 

“That won’t make any difference." 

“Oh, yes, it does ! Her house is full all 
the time." 

“Shucks ! Have you asked her if 
there ’s a room ready for you?" 

“Indeed I have n’t ! I would n’t think 
of imposing on a busy hostess." 

“I might say something about it," he 
suggested slyly. 

“You will do nothing of the kind." 

“Oh, I don’t know ! I ’m going home 
myself day after to-morrow." 

204 


ELLIOTT ACTS ON AN IDEA 


Hastily Elliott set down the kettle she 
had lifted. “Are you? That’s nice. I 
mean, we shall miss you, but of course you 
have to go some time, I suppose.” 

“It won’t be any trouble at all to speak 
to Mother.” 

“Stannard,” and the color burned in her 
cheeks, “will you please stop fiddling 
around this kitchen? It makes me ner- 
vous to see you. I nearly burned myself 
in the steam of that kettle and I ’m liable 
to drop something on you any time.” 

“Oh, all right! I ’ll get out. Fiddling 
is a new verb with you, is n’t it?” 

“Yes, I picked it up. Very expressive, 
I think.” 

“Sounds like the natives.” 

“Sounds pretty well, then. Did I 
hear you say you had an errand some- 
where?” 

“No, you didn’t. You merely heard 
me say that finding myself de trop in my 
fair cousin’s company, I ’d get out of 
205 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


range of her big guns. Never expected 
to rattle you, Lot.” 

“I ’m not rattled.” 

“No? Pretty good imitation, then. 
Oh, I ’m going! Mother ’s ready for you 
all right, though; says so in this letter. 
Here, I ’ll stick it in your apron pocket. 
Better come along with me, day after to- 
morrow. What say?” 

“I ’ll see,” said Elliott, briefly. 

He grinned teasingly, “Ta-ta,” and 
went off, leaving turmoil behind him. 

The minute Stannard was out of the 
door Elliott did a strange thing. Reach- 
ing with wet pink thumb and forefinger 
into the depths of the blue apron pocket, 
she extracted the letter and hurled it 
across the kitchen into a corner. 

“There!” she cried disdainfully, “you 
go over there and stay a while, horrid old 
letter ! I ’m not going to let you spoil my 
perfectly good time getting dinner.” 

But it was spoiled : no mere words 
206 


ELLIOTT ACTS ON AN IDEA 


could alter the fact. Try as she would to 
put the letter out of her mind and think 
only of how to do a dozen things at once 
one quarter as quickly and skilfully as 
Laura and Aunt Jessica did them, which 
is what the apparently simple process of 
dishing up a dinner means, the fine thrill 
of the enterprise was gone. Laura came 
in to help her and Elliott’s tongue tripped 
briskly through a deal of chatter, but all 
the while underneath there was a little 
undercurrent of uneasiness and anxiety. 
Would n’t you have thought it would 
delight her to have the opportunity of 
doing what she had so much wished to 
do? 

“What ’s this ?” Laura asked, spying 
the white envelop on the floor ; “a letter ?” 

“Oh, yes,” said Elliott, “one I dropped,” 
and she tucked it into the pocket of the 
white skirt that had been all the time 
under the blue apron, giving it a vindictive 
little slap as she did so. Which, of 
207 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


course, was quite uncalled for, as if any 
one was responsible for what was in the 
letter, that person was Elliott Cameron. 
The fact that she knew this very well only 
added a little extra vigor to the slap. 

And all through dinner she sat and 
laughed and chattered away, exactly as 
though she were n’t conscious in every 
nerve of the letter in her pocket, despite 
the fact that she did n’t know a word it 
said. But she did n’t eat much : the taste 
of food seemed to choke her. Her gaze 
wandered from Mother Jess to Father 
Bob and back, around the circle of eager, 
happy, alert faces. And she felt — poor 
Elliott! — as though her first discontent 
were a boomerang now returned to stab 
her. 

“This is Elliott’s dinner, I would have 
you all know,” announced Laura when the 
pie was served. “She did it all herself.” 

“Not every bit,” said Elliott, honestly; 
208 


ELLIOTT ACTS ON AN IDEA 

but her disclaimer was lost in the chorus 
of praise. 

Father Bob laid down his fork, looking 
pleased. “Did you, indeed? Now, this 
is what I call a well-cooked dinner.” 

“I ’ll give you a recommend for a cook,” 
drawled Stannard, “and eat my words 
about tightening my belt, too.” 

“Some dinner!” Bruce commented. 

“Please, I ’d like another piece,” said 
Priscilla. 

“Me, too,” chimed in Tom. “It ’s cork- 
ing.” 

Laura clapped her hands. “Listen, 
Elliott, listen! Could praise go further?” 

But Mother Jess, when they rose from 
the table, slipped an arm through Elliott’s 
and drew her toward the veranda. “Did 
the cook lose her appetite getting dinner, 
little girl?” 

“Oh, no, indeed, Aunt Jessica! Get- 
ting dinner did n’t tire me a bit. I just 
209 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


loved it. I — I did n’t seem to feel hungry 
this noon, that was all.” 

Mother Jess patted her arm. “Well, 
run away now, dear. You are not to give 
a thought to -the dishes. We will see to 
them.” 

At that minute Elliott almost told her 
about the letter in her pocket, that lay like 
a lump of lead on her heart. But Henry 
appeared just then in the doorway and the 
moment passed. 

“Run away, dear,” repeated Aunt 
Jessica, and gave the girl a little push and 
another little pat. “Run away and get 
rested.” 

Slowly Elliott went down the steps and 
along the path that led to the flower bor- 
ders and the apple trees. She was n’t 
really conscious of the way she was going ; 
her feet took charge of her and carried 
her body along while her mind was busy. 
When she came out among a few big trees 
210 


ELLIOTT ACTS ON AN IDEA 


with a welter of piled-up crests on every 
side, she was really astonished. 

“Why!” she cried; “why, here I am on 
the top of the hill !” 

A low, flat rock invited her and she sat 
down. It was queer how different every- 
thing seemed up here. What looked large 
from below had dwindled amazingly. It 
took, she decided, a pretty big thing to 
look big on a hilltop. 

She drew Aunt Margaret’s letter out of 
her pocket and read it. It was very nice, 
but somehow had no tug to it. Phrases 
from a similar letter of Aunt Jessica’s re- 
turned to the girl’s mind. How stupid 
she had been not to appreciate that letter ! 
— stupid and incredibly silly. 

But had n’t she felt something else in 
her pocket just now? Conscience pricked 
when she saw Elizabeth Royce’s hand- 
writing. The seal had not been broken, 
though the letter had come yesterday. 

21 1 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


She remembered now. They were put- 
ting up corn and she had tucked it into 
her pocket for later reading and then had 
forgotten it completely. Luckily, Bess 
need never know that. But what would 
Bess have said to see her friend Elliott, 
corn to the right of her, corn to the left 
of her, cobs piled high in the summer 
kitchen ? 

Bess’s staccato sentences furnished a 
sufficiently emphatic clue. “You poor, 
abused dear ! Whenever are you coming 
home? If I had an aeroplane I ’d fly up 
and carry you off. You must be nearly 
crazy! Those letters you wrote were the 
most tragic things ! I should n’t have 
been a bit surprised any time to hear you 
were sick. Are you sick? Perhaps 
that ’s why you don’t write or come home. 
Wire me the minute you get this. Oh, 
Elliott darling, when I think of you 
marooned in that awful place — ” 

There was more of it. As Elliott read, 


212 


ELLIOTT ACTS ON AN IDEA 


she did a strange thing. She began to 
laugh. But even while she laughed she 
blushed, too. Had she sounded as desper- 
ate as all that? How far away such 
tragedies seemed now ! Suppose she 
should write, “Dear Bess, I like it up here 
and I am going to stay my year out.” 
Bess would think her crazy; so would all 
the girls, and Aunt Margaret, too. 

And then suddenly an arresting idea 
came into her head. What difference 
would it make if they did think her crazy ? 
Elliott Cameron had never had such an 
idea before; all her life she had in a per- 
fectly nice way thought a great deal about 
what people thought of her. This idea 
was so strange it set her gasping. “But 
how they would talk about me!” she said. 
And then her brain clicked back, exactly 
like another person speaking, “What if 
they did? That wouldn’t really make 
you crazy, would it?” “Why, no, I sup- 
pose it wouldn’t,” she thought. “And 
213 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


most likely they ’d be all talked out by the 
time I got back, too. But even if they 
were n’t, any one would be crazy to think 
it was crazy to want to stay up here at 
Uncle Bob’s and Aunt Jessica’s. Even 
Stannard has stayed weeks longer than he 
needed to !” 

When she thought of that she opened 
her eyes wide for a minute. “Oho!” she 
said to herself; “I guess Stan did get a 
rise out of me ! You were easy game that 
time, Elliott Cameron.” 

She sat on her mossy stone a long time. 
There was n’t anything in the world, was 
there, to stand in the way of her staying 
her year out, the year she had been invited 
for, except her own silly pride? What a 
little goose she had been! She sat and 
smiled at the mountains and felt very 
happy and fresh and clean-minded, as 
though her brain had finished a kind of 
house-cleaning and were now put to rights 
again, airy and sweet and ready for use. 

214 


ELLIOTT ACTS ON AN IDEA 

The postman's wagon flashed by on the 
road below. She could see the faded gray 
of the man’s coat. He had been to the 
house and was townward bound now. 
How late he was! Nothing to hurry 
down for. There would be a letter, per- 
haps, but not one from Father. His had 
come yesterday. She rose after a while 
and drifted down through the still Sep- 
tember warmth, as quiet and lazy and con- 
tented as a leaf. 

Priscilla’s small excited face met her at 
the door. 

“Sidney’s sick; we just got the letter. 
Mother ’s going to camp to-morrow.” 

“Sidney sick! Who wrote? What’s 
the matter?” 

“He did. He ’s not much sick, but he 
does n’t feel just right. He ’s in the hos- 
pital. I guess he can’t be much sick, if he 
wrote, himself. Mother was n’t to come, 
he said, but she ’s going.” 

“Of course.” Nervous fear clutched 

215 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


Elliott’s throat, like an icy hand. Oh, 
poor Aunt Jessica ! Poor Laura ! 

“Where are they?” she asked. 

“In Mumsie’s room,” said Priscilla. 
“We ’re all helping.” 

Elliott mounted the stairs. She had to 
force her feet along, for they wished, 
more than anything else, to run away. 
What should she say? She tried to think 
of words. As it turned out, she didn’t 
have to say anything. 

Laura was the only person in Aunt 
Jessica’s room when they reached it. She 
sat in a low chair by a window, mending a 
gray blouse. 

“Elliott ’s come to help, too,” an- 
nounced Priscilla. 

“That ’s good,” said Laura. “You can 
put a fresh collar and cuffs in this gray 
waist of Mother’s, Elliott — I ’ll have it 
done in a minute — while I go set the 
crab-apple jelly to drip. And perhaps 
you can mend this little tear in her skirt. 

216 


ELLIOTT ACTS ON AN IDEA 

Then I ’ll press the suit. There is n’t 
anything very tremendous to do.” 

It was all so matter-of-fact and quiet 
and natural that Elliott did n’t know what 
to make of it. She managed to gasp, “I 
hope Sidney is n’t very sick.” 

“He thinks not,” said Laura, “but of 
course Mother wants to see for herself. 
She is telephoning Mrs. Blair now about 
the Ladies’ Aid. They were to have met 
here this week. Mother thinks perhaps 
she can arrange an exchange of dates, 
though I tell her if Sid ’s as he says he is, 
they might just as well come.” 

Elliott, who had been all ready to put 
her arms around Laura’s neck and kiss 
and comfort her, felt the least little bit 
taken aback. It seemed that no comfort 
was needed. But it was a relief, too. 
Laura could n't sit there, so cool and calm 
and natural-looking, sewing and talking 
about crab-apple juice and Ladies’ Aid, if 
there were anything radically wrong. 

217 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


Then Aunt Jessica came into the room 
and said that Mrs. Blair would like the 
Ladies’ Aid, herself, that week; she had 
been wishing she could have them; and 
did n’t Elliott feel the need of something 
to eat to supplement her scanty dinner? 

That put to rout the girl’s last fears. 
She smiled quite naturally and said with- 
out any stricture in her throat : “Honestly, 
I ’m not hungry. And I am going to put 
a clean collar in your blouse.” 

“What should I do without my girls!” 
smiled Mother Jess. 

It was after supper that the telegram 
came, but even then there was no panic. 
These Camerons didn’t do any of the 
things Elliott had once or twice seen 
people do in her Aunt Margaret’s house- 
hold. No one ran around futilely, doing 
nothing; no one had hysterics; no one even 
cried. 

Mother Jess’s face went very white 
when Father Bob came back from the tele- 
218 


ELLIOTT ACTS ON AN IDEA 

phone and said, “Sidney is n't so well. ,, 

“Have they sent for us?” 

He nodded. “You'd better take the 
sleeper. The eighty-thirty from Upton 
will make it.” 

“Can you—?” 

“Not with things the way they are 
here.” 

Then they all scattered, to do the things 
that had to be done. Elliott was helping 
Laura pack the suit-case when she had 
her idea. It really was a wonderful idea 
for a girl who had never in her life put 
herself out for any one else. Like a flash 
the first part of it came to her, without 
thought of a sequel; and the words were 
out of her mouth almost before she was 
aware she had thought them. 

“You ought to go, Laura!” she cried. 
“Sidney is your twin.” 

“I 'd like to go.” Something in the 
guarded tone, something deep and intense 
and controlled, struck Elliott to conster- 
219 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


nation. If Laura felt that way about it! 

“Why don't you, Laura? Can't you 
possibly?" 

The other shook her head. “Mother is 
the one to go. If we both went, who 
would keep house here?" 

For a fraction of a second Elliott hesi- 
tated. “I would." 

The words once spoken, fairly swept 
her out of herself. All her little pru- 
dences and selfishnesses and self-distrusts 
went overboard together. Her cheeks 
flamed. She dropped the brush and comb 
she was packing and dashed out of the 
room. 

A group of people stood in the kitchen. 
Without stopping to think, Elliott ran up 
to them. 

“Can't Laura go?" she cried eagerly. 
“It will be so much more comfortable to 
be two than one. And she is Sidney's 
twin. I don't know a great deal, but 
people will help me, and I got dinner this 
220 


ELLIOTT ACTS ON AN IDEA 

noon. Oh, she must go! Don't you see 
that she must go ?” 

Father Bob looked at the girl for a 
minute in silence. Then he spoke : 
“Well, I guess you ’re right. I will look 
after the chickens.” 

“I ’ll mix their feed,” said Gertrude; “I 
know just how Laura does it — and I ’ll do 
the dishes.” 

“I ’ll get breakfasts,” said Bruce. 

“I ’ll make the butter,” said Tom. 
“I ’ve watched Mother times enough. And 
helped her, too.” 

“I ’ll see to Prince and the kitty,” 
chimed in Priscilla, “and do, oh, lots of 
things !” 

“I ’ll be responsible for the milk,” said 
Henry. 

“I ’ll keep house,” said Elliott, “if you 
leave me anything to do.” 

“And I ’ll help you,” said Harriet 
Gordon. 

It was really settled in that minute, 


221 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


though Father Bob and Mother Jess talked 
it over again by themselves. 

“Are you sure, dear, you want to do 
this?” Mother Jess asked Elliott. 

“Perfectly sure,” the girl answered. 
She felt excited and confident, as though 
she could do anything. 

“It won’t be easy.” 

“I know that. But please let me try.” 

“And there are the Gordons,” said 
Mother Jess, half to herself. 

“Yes,” echoed Elliott, “there are the 
Gordons.” 

When the little car ran up to the door 
to take the two over to Upton and Mother 
Jess and Laura were saying good-by, 
Laura strained Elliott tight. “I ’ll love 
you forever for this,” she whispered. 

Then they were off and with them 
seemed to have gone something indispen- 
sable to the well-being of the people who 
lived in the white house at the end of the 
road. Elliott, watching the car vanish 


222 


ELLIOTT ACTS ON AN IDEA 


around a turn in the road, hugged Laura’s 
words tight to her heart. It was the only 
way to keep her knees from wabbling at 
the thought of what was before her. 


223 


CHAPTER X 


what's in a dress? 

O F course Elliott never could have 
done it without the Gordons. 
Elliott and Harriet made the crab-apple 
juice into jelly, Mrs. Gordon sent in bread 
and cookies, and both mother and daughter 
stood behind the girl with their skill and 
experience, ready to be called on at a 
moment’s notice. 

“Just send for us any time you get into 
trouble or want help about something," 
said Mrs. Gordon over the telephone. 
“One of us will come right up. Most 
likely it will be Harriet. I ’m so cumber- 
some, I can’t get about as I ’d like to. 
Large bodies move slowly, you know." 
Other people besides the Gordons sent 
224 


WHAT'S IN A DRESS? 


in things to eat. Elliott thought she had 
never known such a stream of generosity 
as set toward the white house at the end 
of the road — intelligent generosity, too. 
There seemed a definite plan and some 
consultation behind it. Mr. Blair brought 
a roast of beef already cooked, from Mrs. 
Blair, and hoped for both of them that 
there would soon be good news of the boy. 
The Blisses sent in pies enough for two 
days and asked Elliott to let them know 
when she was ready for more. People 
she knew and people she did'n’t know 
brought rolls and cookies and doughnuts 
and gelatines and even roast chickens, and 
asked, with real anxiety in their voices, for 
the latest news from Camp Devens. 

They did n’t bring their offerings all at 
once ; they brought them continuously and 
steadily and with truly remarkable appro- 
priateness. Just when Elliott was think- 
ing that she must begin to cook, something 
was sure to rattle up to the door in a 
225 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


wagon, or roll up in an automobile, or 
travel on foot in a basket. It was the ex- 
treme timeliness of the gifts that proved 
the guiding intelligence behind them. 

“They could n’t all happen so,” was 
Henry’s conclusion. “Now, could they? 
Gee ! and I ’ve thought some of those folks 
were pokes !” 

“So have I,” said Elliott, feeling very 
much ashamed of her hasty judgments. 

“You never know till you get into 
trouble how good people are,” was Father 
Bob’s verdict. 

Gertrude fingered a doughnut ruefully. 
“I want it, but I ’m almost ashamed to eat 
it, I ’ve thought such horrid things of that 
old Mrs. Gadsby that made ’em.” 

“They ’re good,” said Tom. “Mrs. 
Gadsby knows how to make doughnuts, if 
she has got a tongue in her head! Say, 
but I ’d as soon have thought old Allen 
would send us doughnuts as the Gadsby.” 

“Mr. Allen brought us a tongue this 
226 


WHAT’S IN A DRESS? 

morning,” Elliott remarked; “said his 
housekeeper boiled it; hoped it was n’t too 
tough to eat. You could n’t 'git nothin’ 
good, these days !’ ” 

“Enoch Allen?” demanded Henry; 
“the old fellow that lives at the foot of the 
hill ? Go tell that to the marines !” 

“I don’t know where he lives,” said 
Elliott, “but he certainly said his name 
was Enoch Allen.” 

Bruce chuckled. “Mother Jess’s chick- 
ens have come home 'to roost, all right.” 

“What did she ever do for Enoch 
Allen?” asked Tom. 

“Oh, don’t you remember,” cried Ger- 
trude, “the time his old dog died? 
Mother found the dog one day, dying in 
the woods. I was along and she sent me 
to call Mr. Allen, while she stayed with 
the dog. I was just a little girl and kind 
of scared, but Mother said Mr. Allen 
wasn’t anybody to be afraid of; he was 
just a lonely old man. I heard him tell 
227 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


her it was n’t every woman would have 
stayed with his dog. It was dead when 
he got there.” 

But even with competent advisers 
within call and all the aids that came in 
the shape of “Mother Jess’s chickens,” 
and with the best family in the world all 
eagerness to be helpful and to “carry on” 
during Laura and Mother Jess’s absence, 
Elliott found that housekeeping was n’t 
half so simple as it looked. 

Life still had its moments and she was 
in the midst of one of the worst of them 
now. If you have ever stood in a kitchen 
where little gray kittens of dust rollicked 
under the chairs and all the dinner kettles 
and pans were piled on the table, unscraped 
and unwashed, and you saw ahead of you 
more things that you had planned to do 
than you could possibly get through before 
supper, and one girl was crying in the attic 
and another was crying in the china- 
closet, and your own heart was in your 
228 


WHAT’S IN A DRESS? 


boots, you know how Elliott Cameron felt 
at this minute. Everything had gone 
wrong, since the time she got up half an 
hour late in the morning; but the most 
wrong thing of all was the letter from 
Laura. 

It had come just as they were finishing 
dinner, for the postman was late. Father 
Bob had cut it open, while every one looked 
eager and hopeful. Mother Jess had 
written the day before that the doctors 
thought Sidney was better ; there had been 
a telegram to that effect, too. Father 
Bob read Laura’s letter quite through be- 
fore he opened his lips. It was n’t a long 
letter. Then he said : “The boy ’s not so 
well, to-day. — Bruce, we must finish the 
ensilage. Come out as soon as you ’re 
through, boys. Tom, I want you to get 
in the tomatoes before night. We ’re due 
for a freeze, unless signs fail.” Not an- 
other word about Sidney. And he went 
right out of the room. 

229 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


“What does she say?” whispered Ger- 
trude, dropping her fork so that it rattled 
against her plate. Gertrude was always 
dropping things, but this time she did n’t 
flush, as she usually did, at her own 
awkwardness. 

Elliott picked up the letter Father Bob 
had left beside her plate. She dreaded to 
unfold the single sheet, but what else could 
she do, with all those pairs of anxious eyes 
fixed on her ? She steadied her voice and 
read slowly and without a trace of ex- 
pression : 

“Sidney had a bad time in the night, but is 
resting more easily this morning. Mother never 
leaves him. Every one is so good to us here. 
His officers seem to think a lot of Sid. So do 
the men of his company, as far as we have seen 
them. I don’t know what to write you, Father. 
The doctor says, ‘While there ’s life there ’s 
hope, and that our coming is the only thing that 
has saved Sid so far. He says that he has seen 
the sickest of boys pull through with their 
mothers here. We will telegraph when there is 
any change. Love to all of you, dear ones, and 

230 


WHAT’S IN A DRESS? 

tell Elliott I shall never forget what she has done 
for me. 

“Laura” 

The room was very still for a minute. 
Elliott kept her eyes on the letter, to hide 
the tears that filled them. Sidney was go- 
ing to die; she knew it. 

Slowly, silently, one after another, they 
all got up from the table. The boys filed 
out into the kitchen, washed their hands 
at the sink, and still without a word went 
about their work. Gertrude and Priscilla 
began mechanically to*clear the table. A 
plate crashed to the floor from Gertrude’s 
hands and shattered to fragments. She 
stared at the pieces stupidly, as though 
wondering how they had come there, took 
a step in the direction of the dust-pan, and, 
suddenly bursting into tears, turned and 
ran out of the room. Elliott could hear 
her feet pounding up-stairs, on, on, till 
they reached the attic. A door slammed 
and all was quiet. 

2 31 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

Down in the kitchen Elliott and Pris- 
cilla faced each other. Great round drops 
were running down Priscilla’s cheeks, but 
she looked up at Elliott trustfully. And 
then Elliott failed her. She knew herself 
that she was failing. But it seemed as 
though she just could n’t keep from crying. 
“Oh, dear !” she sighed. “Oh, dear, is n’t 
everything just awful!” Then she did 
cry. 

And over Priscilla’s sober little face — 
Elliott was n’t so blinded by her tears that 
she failed to see it — came the queerest ex- 
pression of stupefaction and woe and utter 
forlornness. It was after that that 
Elliott heard Priscilla sobbing in the china- 
closet. 

Her first impulse was to go to the closet 
and pull the child out. Her second was 
to let her stay. “She may as well have 
her cry out,” thought the girl, unhappily. 
“/ couldn’t do anything to comfort her!” 

232 


WHAT’S IN A DRESS? 

— which shows how very, very, very 
miserable Elliott was, herself. 

The world was topsyturvy and would 
never get right again. 

Instead of going for Priscilla she went 
for a dust-pan and brush and collected the 
fragments of broken china. Then she 
began to pile up the dishes, but, after a 
few futile movements, sat down in a chair 
and cried again. It didn’t seem worth 
while to do anything else. So now there 
were three girls crying all at once in that 
house and every one of them in a different 
place. When at last Elliott did look in 
the closet Priscilla was n’t there. 

The appearance of that usually spotless 
kitchen had a queer effect on Elliott. She 
saw so many things needing to be done at 
once that she did n’t do any of them. She 
simply stood and stared hopelessly at the 
wreck of comfort and cleanliness and good 
cheer. 


233 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


“Hello!” said Bruce at the door. 
“Want an extra hand for an hour?” 

“I thought you were cutting ensilage,” 
said Elliott. It was good to see Bruce; 
the courage in his voice lifted her spirits 
in spite of her. 

“I ’ve left a substitute.” The boy 
glanced into the stove and started for the 
wood-box. 

“Oh, dear! I forgot that fire. Has it 
gone out ?” 

“Not quite. I 'll have it going again 
in a jiff.” 

He came back with a broom in his 
hands. 

“Let me do that,” said the girl. 

“Oh, all right.” He relinquished the 
broom and brought out the dish-pan. 
“Hi-yi, Stan, lend a hand here!” 

The boy in the doorway gave one glance 
at Elliott’s tear-stained face and came 
quietly into the room. “Sure,” he said, 
234 


WHAT’S IN A DRESS? 


picking up a dish-cloth and gingerly 
reaching for a tumbler. “Which end do 
you take ’em by, top or bottom?” 

Stannard wiping dishes, and with 
Bruce Fearing ! The sight was so strange 
that Elliott’s broom stopped moving. 
The two boys at the dish-pan chaffed each 
other good-naturedly; their jokes might 
have seemed a little forced, had you 
examined them carefully, but the effect 
was normal and cheering. Now and then 
they threw a word to the girl and the pile 
of clean dishes grew under their hands. 

Elliott’s broom began to move again. 
Something warm stirred at her heart. 
She felt sober and humble and ashamed 
and — yes, happy — all at once. How nice 
boys were when they were nice ! 

Then she remembered something. 

“Oh, Stan, was n’t it to-day you were 
going home ?” 

“Nix,” Stannard replied. “Guess I ’ll 
235 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


stay on a bit. School has n't begun. I 
want to go nutting before I hit the trail 
for home. ,, 

It was a different-looking kitchen the 
boys left half an hour later and a different- 
looking girl. 

Bruce lingered a minute behind Stan- 
nard. “We have n’t had any telegram,” 
he said. “Remember that. And as for 
things in here, I would n’t let ’em bother 
me, if I were you! You can’t do every- 
thing, you know. Keep cool, feed us the 
stuff folks send in, and let some things 
slide.” 

“Mother Jess does n’t let things slide.” 

“Mother Jess has been at it a good many 
years, but I ’ll bet she would now and then 
if things got too thick and she could n’t 
keep both ends up. There ’s more to 
Mother Jess’s job than what they call 
housekeeping.” 

“Oh, yes,” sighed Elliott, “I know that. 
236 


WHAT’S IN A DRESS? 


But just what do you mean, Bruce, that I 
could do?” 

He hesitated a minute. “Well, call it 
morale. That suggests the thing.” 

Elliott thought hard for a minute after 
the door closed on Bruce. Perhaps, after 
all, seeing that the family had three meals 
a day and lived in a decently clean house 
and slept warm at night, necessary as such 
oversight was, was n't the most imperative 
business in hand. Somehow or other 
those things were n’t at all what came into 
her mind when she thought of Aunt 
Jessica — no, indeed, though Aunt Jessica 
made such perfectly delicious things to 
eat. What came into her mind was far 
different — like the way Aunt Jessica had 
sat on Elliott’s bed and kissed her, that 
homesick first night; Aunt Jessica’s face 
at meal-time, with Uncle Bob across the 
table and all her boys and girls filling the 
space between; Aunt Jessica comforting 
237 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


Priscilla when the child had met with some 
mishap. Priscilla seldom cried when she 
hurt herself; “Mother kisses the place 
and makes it well. ,, The words linked 
themselves with Bruce’s in Elliott’s 
thought. Was that what he had meant 
by morale? She couldn’t have put into 
words what she understood just then. 
For a minute a door in her brain seemed 
to swing open and she saw straight into 
the heart of things. Then it clicked to- 
gether and left her saying, “I guess I fell 
down on that part of my job, Mother 
Jess.” 

Elliott hung up her apron and mounted 
the stairs. She did n’t stop with the 
second floor and her own little room, but 
kept right on to the attic. There was a 
door at the head of the attic stairs. 
Elliott pushed it open. On a broken- 
backed horsehair sofa Gertrude lay, face 
down, her nose buried in a faded pillow. 
In a wabbly rocker, at imminent risk of a 
238 


WHAT’S IN A DRESS? 


breakdown, Priscilla jerked back and 
forth. Gertrude’s hair was tousled and 
Priscilla’s face was tear-stained and 
swollen. 

“ Don’t you think,” Elliott suggested, 
“it is time we girls washed our faces and 
made ourselves pretty?” 

“I left you all the dishes to do.” Ger- 
trude’s voice was muffled by the pillow. 
“I — I just could n’t help it.” 

“That ’s all right. They ’re done now. 
I did n’t do them, either. Let ’s go down- 
stairs and wash up.” 

“I don’t want to be pretty,” Priscilla 
objected, continuing to rock. Gertrude 
neither moved nor spoke again. 

What should Elliott do? She remem- 
bered Bruce. 

“We have n’t had any telegram, you 
know,” she said. Nobody spoke. “Well, 
then, we were three little geese, were n’t 
we? Not having had a telegram means a 
lot just now.” Priscilla stopped rocking. 
239 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

“I ’m going to believe Sidney will get 
well/' Elliott continued. It was hard 
work to talk to such unresponsive ears, but 
she kept right on. “And now I am going 
down-stairs to put on one of my prettiest 
dresses, so as to look cheerful for supper. 
You may try whether you can get into that 
blue dress of mine you like so much, 
Trudy. I ’m going to let Priscilla wear 
my coral beads.” 

“The pink ones?” asked Priscilla. 

“The pink ones. They will be just a 
match for your pink dress.” 

“I don’t feel like dressing up,” said 
Gertrude. 

Elliott felt like clapping her hands. 
She had roused Trudy to speech. 

“Then wear something of your own,” 
she said stanchly. “It does n’t matter 
what we wear, so long as we look nice.” 

Mercurial Priscilla was already feeling 
the new note in the air. Elliott would n’t 
talk so, would she, if Sidney really were 
240 


WHAT’S IN A DRESS? 


not going to get well ? And yet there was 
Gertrude, who did n't seem to feel cheered 
up a bit. Pris’s little heart was torn. 

Elliott tried one last argument. “I 
think Mother Jess would like to have us do 
it for Father Bob and the boys’ sake — to 
help keep up their courage.” 

Priscilla bounced out of the rocker. 
“Will it help keep up their courage for us 
to wear our pretty clothes?” 

“I had a notion it might.” 

“Let ’s do it, Trudy. I — I think I feel 
better already.” 

Gertrude sat up on the horsehair sofa. 
“Maybe Mother would like us to.” 

“I ’m sure she ’d like us to keep on 
hoping,” said Elliott earnestly. “And it 
does n’t matter what we do, so long as we 
do something to show that ’s the way 
we ’ve made up our minds to feel. If you 
can think of any better way to show it than 
by dressing up, Trudy — ” 

“No,” said Gertrude. “But I think I ’ll 
241 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


wear my own clothes to-day, Elliott. 
Thank you, just the same. Some day, if 
Sid — I mean some day I ’ll love to try on 
your blue dress, if you will let me.” 

Three girls, as pretty and chic and trim 
as nature and the contents of their closets 
could make them, sat down to supper that 
night. It was not a jolly meal, but the 
girls set the pace, and every one did his 
best to be cheerful and brave. 

Half-way through supper Stannard laid 
down his fork to ask a question. 
“What ’s happened to your hair, Trudy?” 

“Elliott did it for me. Do you like it?” 

Stannard nodded. “Good work!” 

Father Bob, his attention aroused, in- 
spected the three with new interest in his 
sober eyes. He said nothing then, but 
after supper his hand fell on Elliott’s 
shoulder approvingly. 

“Well done, little girl! That’s the 
right way. Face the music with your 
chin up.” 


242 


WHAT’S IN A DRESS? 


Elliott felt exactly as though some one 
had stiffened her spine. The least little 
doubt had been creeping into her mind lest 
what she had done had been heartless. 
Father Bob’s words put that qualm at rest. 
And, of course, good news would come 
from Sidney in the morning. 

But courage has a way of ebbing in 
spite of one. It was dark and very cold 
when a forlorn little figure appeared be- 
side Elliott’s bed. 

“I can’t go to sleep. Trudy’s asleep. 
I can hear her. I think I am going to 
cry again.” 

Elliott sat up. What should she do? 
What would Aunt Jessica do? 

“Come in here and cry on me.” 

Priscilla climbed in between the sheets 
and Elliott put both arms around the little 
girl. Priscilla snuggled close. 

“I tried to think — the way you said, but 
I can’t. Is Sidney — ” sniffle — “going to 
die—” sniffle— “like Ted Gordon?” 

243 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


“No,” said Elliott, who a minute ago 
had been afraid of the very same thing. 
“No, I am perfectly positive he is going to 
get well. ,, 

Just saying the words seemed to help, 
somehow. 

Priscilla snuggled closer. “You 're 
awful comforting. A person gets scared 
at night." 

“A person does, indeed." 

“Not so much when you 've got com- 
pany," said Priscilla. 

The warmth of the little body in her 
arms struck through to Elliott's own 
shivering heart. “Not half so much 
when you 've got company," she acknowl- 
edged. 


244 


CHAPTER XI 


MISSING 

S URE enough, in the morning came 
better news. Father Bob’s face, 
when he turned around from the tele- 
phone, told that, even before he opened his 
lips. 

“Sidney is holding his own,” he said. 
You may think that was n’t much better 
news, but it meant a great deal to the 
Camerons. “Sidney is holding his own,” 
they told every one who inquired, and their 
faces were hopeful. If Father Bob had 
any fears, he kept them to himself. The 
rest of the Camerons were young and it 
did n’t seem possible to them that Sidney 
could do anything but get well. Last 
night had been a bad dream, that was all. 
245 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


The next morning's message had the 
word “better” in it. “Little” stood be- 
fore “better,” but nobody, not even Father 
Bob, paid much attention to “little.” 
Sidney was better. It was a week before 
Mother Jess wrote that the doctors pro- 
nounced him out of danger and that she 
and Laura would soon be home. Mean- 
while, many things had happened. 

You might have thought that Sidney's 
illness was enough trouble to come to the 
Camerons at one time, but as Bruce quoted 
with a twist in his smile, “It never rains 
but it pours.” This time Bruce himself 
got the message which came from the War 
Department and read: 

You are informed that Lieutenant Peter Fear- 
ing has been reported missing since September 
fifteenth. Letter follows. 

The Camerons felt as badly as though 
Peter Fearing had been their own brother. 

“The telegram does n’t say that he ’s 
246 


MISSING 

dead,” Trudy declared, over and over 
again. 

“Maybe he 's a prisoner,” Tom sug- 
gested. 

“Perhaps he had to come down in a 
wood somewhere,” Henry speculated, 
“and will get back to our lines.” 

“The government makes mistakes 
sometimes,” Stannard said. “There was 
a woman in Upton — ” He went on with 
a long story about a woman whose son 
was reported killed in France on the very 
day the boy had been in his mother's house 
on furlough from a cantonment. There 
were a great many interesting and in- 
genious details to the story, but nobody 
paid much attention to them. “So you 
never can tell,” Stannard wound up. 

“No, you never can tell,” Bruce agreed, 
but he did n't look convinced. Some- 
thing, he was quite sure, was wrong with 
Pete. 

“Don't anybody write Mother Jess,” he 
247 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


said. “She and Laura have enough to 
worry about with Sid.” 

“What if they see it in the papers?” 
Elliott asked. 

“They ’re busy. Ten to one they won’t 
see it, since it is n’t head-lined on the front 
page. Wait till we get the letter.” 

“How soon do you suppose the letter 
will come?” Gertrude wished to know. 

“ 'Letter follows,’ ” Henry read from 
the yellow slip which the postman deliv- 
ered from the telegraph office. “That 
means right away, I should say.” 

“Maybe it does and maybe it does n’t,” 
said Tom and then he had a story to tell. 
It didn’t take Tom long, for he was a 
boy of fewer words than Stannard. 

Morning, noon, and night the Camerons 
speculated about that telegram. They 
combed its words with a fine-toothed comb, 
but they could n’t make anything out of 
them except the bald fact that Pete was 
missing. 


248 


MISSING 


If you think they let it go at that, you 
are very much mistaken. Where the fact 
stopped the Cameron imaginations began, 
and imaginations never know where to 
stop. The less actual information an 
imagination has to work on, the busier it 
is. The Camerons had n’t any more 
imagination than most people, but what 
they had grew very busy. It fairly 
amazed them with its activity. If you 
think that this was silly and that they 
ought to have chained up their imagina- 
tions until the promised letter arrived, it 
only shows that you have never received 
any such telegram. 

After all, the letter, when it came, 
did n’t tell them much. The letter said 
that Lieutenant Peter Fearing had gone 
out with his squadron on a bombing- 
expedition well within the enemy lines. 
The formation had successfully accom- 
plished its raid and was returning when 
it was taken by surprise and surrounded 
249 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


by a greatly superior force of enemy 
planes, which gave the Americans a run- 
ning fight of thirty-nine minutes to their 
lines. Lieutenant Fearing’ s was one of 
two planes which failed to return to the 
aerodrome. When last seen, his machine 
was in combat with four Hun planes over 
enemy territory. 

“What did I tell you?” interrupted Tom. 
“He ’s a prisoner.” 

An airplane had been reported as fall- 
ing in flames near this spot, but whether 
it was Lieutenant Fearing’s machine or 
another, no data was as yet at hand to 
prove. The writer begged to remain, etc. 

No, that letter only opened up fresh 
fields for Cameron imaginations to tor- 
ment Cameron hearts. Nobody had hap- 
pened to think before of Pete’s machine 
catching fire. 

“Gee!” said Henry, “if that plane was 
his—” 


250 


MISSING 

“There ’s no certainty that it was,” said 
Bruce, quickly. 

All the Camerons, you see, knew per- 
fectly well what happens to an aviator 
whose machine catches fire. 

“If that machine was Pete’s,” Father 
Bob mused, “Hun aviators may drop word 
of him within our lines. They have done 
that kind of thing before.” 

“Would n’t Bob cable, if he knew any- 
thing more than this letter says?” Ger- 
trude questioned. 

“I expect Bob ’s waiting to find out 
something certain before he cables,” said 
Father Bob. “Doubtless he has written. 
We shall just have to wait for his letter.” 

“Wait! Gee!” whispered Henry. 

“Both the boys’ letters were so awfully 
late, in the summer!” sighed Gertrude. 
“However can we wait for a letter from 
Bob?” 

Elliott said nothing at all. Her heart 

251 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


was aching with sympathy for Bruce. 
When a person could do something, she 
thought, it helped tremendously. Mother 
Jess and Laura had gone to Sidney and she 
had had a -chance to make Laura’s going 
possible, but there did n’t seem to be any- 
thing she could do for Bruce. And she 
wished to do something for Bruce; she 
found that she wished to tremendously. 
Thinking about Mother Jess and Laura 
reminded her to look up and ask, “What 
are we going to write them at Camp 
Devens ?” 

Then she discovered that she and Bruce 
were alone in the room. He was sitting 
a-t Mother Jess’s desk, in as deep a brown 
study as she had been. The girl’s voice 
roused him. 

“The kind of thing we ’ve been writing 
— home news. Time enough to tell 
them about Pete when they get here. 
By that time, perhaps, there will be some- 
thing definite to tell.” He hesitated a 
252 


MISSING 


minute. “Laura is going to feel pretty 
well cut up over this.” 

Elliott looked up quickly. “Especially 
cut up ?” 

“I think so. Oh, there was n’t any- 
thing definite between her and Pete — 
nothing, at least, that they told the rest 
of us. But a fellow who had eyes — ” 
He left the sentence unfinished and walked 
over to Elliott’s chair. “You know, I told 
you,” he said, “that I should n’t go into 
this war unless I was called. Of course 
I ’m registered now, but whether or not 
they call me — if Pete is out of it — and I 
can possibly manage it, I ’m going in.” 

A queer little pain contracted Elliott’s 
heart. And then that odd heart of hers 
began to swell and swell until she thought 
it would burst. She looked at the boy, 
with proud eyes. It did n’t occur to her 
to wonder what she was proud of. Bruce 
Fearing was no kin of hers, you know. 

“I knew you would.” Somehow it 
253 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


seemed to the girl that she could always 
tell what Bruce Fearing was going to do, 
and that there was nothing strange in such 
knowledge. How strong he was! how 
splendid and understanding and fine ! 
“Oh,” she cried, “I wish, how I wish I 
could help you !” 

“You do help me,” he said. 

“I?” Her eyes lifted in real surprise. 
“How can I?” 

“By being you.” 

His hand had only to move an inch to 
touch hers, but it lay motionless. His 
eyes, gray and steady and clear, held the 
girl’s. She gave him back look for look. 

“I am glad,” she said softly and her 
face was like a flower. 

Bruce was out of the house before 
Elliott thought of the thing she could do 
for him. 

“Mercy me!” she cried. “You’re the 
slowest person I ’ve ever seen in my life, 
Elliott Cameron !” She ran to the kitchen 
254 


MISSING 


door, but the boy was nowhere in sight. 
“He must be out at the barn,” she said 
and took a step in that direction, only to 
take it back. “No, I won’t. I ’ll just go 
by myself and do it” 

Whatever it was, it put her in a great 
hurry. As fast as she had dashed to the 
kitchen she now ran to the front hall, but 
the third step of the stairs halted her. 

“Elliott Cameron,” she declared earn- 
estly, “I do believe you have lost your 
mind ! Have n’t you any sense at all? 
And you a responsible housekeeper !” 

Perhaps it was n’t the first time a whirl- 
wind had ever struck the Cameron farm- 
house. Elliott had n’t a notion that she 
could work so fast. Her feet fairly flew. 
Bed-covers whisked into place; dusting- 
cloths raced over furniture; even milk- 
pans moved with unwonted celerity. But 
she left them clean, clean and shining. 

“There!” said the girl, “now we shall 
do well enough till dinner-time. I ’m go- 
255 


THE CAMERONS OF H1GHBORO 

in g into the village. Anybody want to 
come?” 

Priscilla jumped up. “I do, unless 
Trudy wants to more.” 

Gertrude shook her head. “I ’m going 
to put up tomatoes,” she said, “the rest 
of the ripe ones.” 

“Don’t you want help?” 

“Not a bit. Tomatoes are no work, at 
all.” 

Elliott dashed up-stairs. In a whirl of 
excitement she pinned on her hat and 
counted her money. No matter how 
much it cost, she meant to say all that she 
wanted to. 

Her cheeks were pink and her dimples 
hard at work playing hide-and-seek with 
their own shadows, when she cranked the 
little car. Everything would come right 
now; it couldn’t fail to come right. 
Priscilla hopped into the seat beside her 
and they sped away. 

“I have cabled Father,” Elliott an- 
256 


MISSING 


nounced at dinner, with the prettiest 
imaginable little air of importance and 
confidence, “I have cabled Father to find 
out all he can about Pete and to let us 
know at once. Perhaps we shall hear 
something to-morrow.” 

But the next day passed, and the next, 
and the day after that, and still no cable 
from Father. 

It was very bewildering. At first 
Elliott jumped every time the telephone 
rang, and took down the receiver with 
quickened pulses. No matter what her 
brain said, her heart told her Father would 
send good news. She could n’t associate 
him with thoughts of ill news. Of course, 
her brain said there was no logic in that 
kind of argument, and that facts were 
facts; and in a case like Pete’s, fathers 
could n’t make or mar them. Her heart 
kept right on expecting good tidings. 

But when long days and longer nights 
dragged themselves by and no word at all 
257 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

came from overseas, the girl found out 
what a big empty place the world may be- 
come, even while it is chuck-full of people, 
and what three thousand miles of water 
really means. She thought she had 
known before, but she hadn’t. So long 
as letters traveled back and forth, irregu- 
larly timed it might be, but continuously, 
she still kept the familiar sense of Father 
— out of sight, but there, as he had always 
been, most dependably there. Now, for 
the first time in her life, she had called 
to him and he had not answered. There 
might be — there probably were, she re- 
minded herself — reasons why he had n’t 
answered; good, reassuring reasons, if 
one only knew them. He might be tem- 
porarily in a region out of touch with 
cables; the service might have dropped a 
link somewhere. One could imagine pos- 
sible explanations. But it was easier to 
imagine other things. And the fact re- 
mained that, since he did n’t answer, she 
258 


MISSING 


could n’t get away from a horrible, 
paralyzing sense that he was n’t there. 

It did n’t do any good to try to run from 
that sensation ; there was nowhere to run. 
It blocked every avenue of thought, a 
sinister shape of dread. The only help 
was in keeping very, very busy. And 
even then one could n’t stop one’s thoughts 
traveling, traveling, traveling along those 
fearful paths. 

At last Elliott knew how the others felt 
about Pete. She had thought she under- 
stood that and felt it, too, but now she 
found that she had n’t. It makes all the 
difference in the world, she discovered, 
whether one stands inside or outside a 
trouble. The heart that had ached so sym- 
pathetically for Bruce knew its first stab 
of loss and recoiled. The others recog- 
nized the difference; or was it only that 
Elliott herself had eyes to see what she 
had been blind to before? No one said 
anything. In little unconscious, lovable 
259 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


ways they made it quite clear that now 
she was one with them. 

“Perhaps we would better send for 
them to come home from Camp Devens, ,, 
Father Bob suggested one day. He threw 
out his remark at the supper-table, which 
would seem to address it to the family at 
large, but he looked straight at Elliott. 

“Oh, no,” she cried, “don’t send for 
them !” But she could n’t keep a flash of 
joy out of her eyes. 

“Sure you ’re not getting tired?” 

“Certain sure!” 

It disappointed her the least little bit 
that Uncle Bob let the suggestion drop so 
readily. And she was disappointed at 
her own disappointment. “Can’t you 
'carry on’ at all?” she demanded of her- 
self, scornfully. “It was all your own do- 
ing, you know.” But how she did long 
at times for Aunt Jessica! 

Of course, Elliott could n’t cry, however 
much she might wish to, with the family 
260 


MISSING 


all taking their cues from her mood. She 
said so fiercely to every lump that rose in 
her throat. She could n’t indulge herself 
at all adequately in the luxury of being 
miserable ; she could n’t even let herself 
feel half as scared as she wished to, be- 
cause, if she did, just once, she couldn’t 
keep control of herself, and if she lost con- 
trol of herself there was no telling where 
she might end — certainly in no state that 
would be of any use to the family. No, 
for their sake, she must sit tight on the 
lid of her grief and fear and anxiety. 

But there were hours when the cover 
lifted a little. No girl, not the bravest, 
could avoid such altogether. Elliott 
did n’t think herself brave, not a bit. She 
knew merely that the thing she had to do 
could n’t be done if there were many such 
hours. 

One day Bruce heard somebody sobbing 
up in the hay-loft. The sound did n’t 
carry far; it was controlled, suppressed; 

261 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


but Bruce had gone up the ladder for 
something or other, I forget just what, 
and, thinking Priscilla was in trouble, he 
kept on. The girl crying, face down in 
the hay, was n’t Priscilla. Very softly 
Bruce started to tiptoe away, but the 
rustling of the hay under his feet betrayed 
him. 

“I did n’t mean — any one to — find me.” 

“Shall I go away?” 

She shook her head. “I can’t stand it !” 
she wailed. “I simply can’t stand it !” 
And she sobbed as though her heart would 
break. 

Bruce sat down beside the girl on the 
hay and patted the hand nearest him. He 
did n’t know anything else to do. Her 
fingers closed on his convulsively. 

“I ’m an awful old cry-baby,” she 
choked at last. “I ’ll behave myself, in a 
minute.” 

“No, cry away,” said Bruce. “A girl 
has to cry sometimes.” 

262 


MISSING 


After a while the racking sobs spent 
themselves. “There!” she said, sitting 
up. “I never thought I 'd let a boy see 
me cry. Now I must go in and help 
Trudy get supper.” 

She dabbed at her eyes with a wet little 
wad of linen. Bruce plucked a clean 
handkerchief from his pocket and tucked 
it into her fingers. 

“Yours does n't seem quite big enough 
for the job,” he said. 

She took it gratefully. She had never 
thought of a boy as a very comforting per- 
son, but Bruce was. “Oh, Bruce, you 
know!”’ 

“Yes, I know.” 

“It 's so — so lonely. Dad 's all I 've 
got, of my really own, in the world.” 

He nodded. “You 're gritty, all right.” 

“Why, Bruce Fearing! how can you say 
that after the way I 've acted?” 

“That 's why I say it.” 

“But I 'm scared all the time. If I did 
263 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

what I wanted to, I’d be a perpetual 
fountain.” 

“And you ’re not.” 

She stared at him. “Is being scared 
and trying to cover it up what you call 
grit?” 

“The grittiest kind of grit.” 

For a sophisticated girl she was 
singularly naive, at times. He watched 
her digest the idea, sitting up on the hay, 
her chin cupped in her two hands, straws 
in her hair. Her eyes were swollen and 
her nose red, and his handkerchief was 
now almost as wet as her own. “I 
thought I was an awful coward,” she said. 

A smile curved his firm lips, but the 
steady gray eyes were tender. “I 
should n’t call you a coward.” 

She shook herself and stood up. 
“Bruce, you ’re a darling. Now, will you 
please go and see if the coast is clear, so I 
can slide up-stairs without being seen? I 
must wash up before supper.” 

264 


MISSING 


“I 'd get supper/' he said, “if I did n't 
have to milk to-night. Promised Henry." 

She shook her head positively. “I 'll let 
you do lots of things, Bruce, but I won't 
let you get supper for me — not with all 
the other things you have to do." 

“Oh, all right! I dare you to jump off 
the hay." 

“Down there? Take you!" she cried, 
and with the word sprang into the air. 

Beside her the boy leaped, too. They 
landed lightly on the fragrant mass in the 
bay of the barn. 

“Oh," she cried, “it 's like flying, is n't 
it ! Why was n't I brought up on a 
farm?" 

There was a little choke still left in her 
voice, and her smile was a trifle unsteady, 
but her words were ready enough. In the 
doorway she turned and waved to the boy 
and then went on, her head held high, 
slender and straight and gallant, into the 
house. 


265 


CHAPTER XII 


HOME-LOVING HEARTS 

M OTHER JESS and Laura were 
coming home. Perhaps Father 
Bob had dropped a hint that their presence 
was needed in the white house at the end 
of the road; perhaps, on the other hand, 
they were just ready to come. Elliott 
never knew for certain. 

Father Bob met the train, while all the 
Cameron boys and girls flew around, mak- 
ing ready at home. The plan had de- 
veloped on the tacit understanding that 
since they all wished to, it was fairer for 
none of them to go to the station. 

Priscilla and Prince were out watching. 
“They 're coming !” she squealed, skipping 
back into the house. “Trudy, Elliott, 
266 


HOME-LOVING HEARTS 


everybody, they're coming !” And she 
was out again, darting in long swallow- 
like swoops down the hill. From every 
direction came Camerons, running; from 
house, barn, garden, young heads moved 
swiftly toward the little car chug-chugging 
up the hill. 

They swarmed over it, not giving it 
time to stop, jumping on the running- 
board, riding on the hood, almost em- 
bracing the car itself in the joy of their 
welcome. Elliott hung back. The others 
had the first right. After their turns — 

Without a word Aunt Jessica took the 
girl into her arms and held her tight. In 
that strong, tender clasp all the stinging 
ache went out of Elliott's hurt. She 
was n't frightened any longer or bewil- 
dered or bitter ; she did n’t know why she 
was n't, but she was n't. She felt just as 
if, somehow or other, things were going 
to be right. 

She had this feeling so strongly that she 
267 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

forgot all about dreading to meet Laura — 
for she had dreaded to meet Laura, she 
was so sorry for her — and kissed her quite 
naturally. Laura kissed Elliott in return 
and said, “Wait till I get you up-stairs/’ 
as though she meant business, and smiled 
just as usual. Her face was a trifle pale, 
but her eyes were bright, and the clear, 
steady glow in them reminded Elliott for 
the first time of the light in Aunt Jessica’s 
eyes. She had n’t remembered ever see- 
ing Laura’s eyes look just like that. How 
much did Laura know, Elliott wondered? 
She would n’t look so, would she, if she 
had heard about Pete? But, strangely 
enough, Elliott did n’t fear her finding out 
or feel nervous lest she might have to tell 
her. 

And after all, as soon as they got up- 
stairs, it came out that Laura did know 
about Pete, for she said : “I ’m glad, oh, 
so glad, that wherever Pete is now, he got 
across and had a chance really to do some- 
268 


HOME-LOVING HEARTS 

thing in this fight. If you had seen what 
I have seen this last week, Elliott — ” 

The shining look in Laura’s face fas- 
cinated Elliott. 

All at once she felt her own words come 
as simply and easily as Laura’s. “But 
will that be enough, Laura — always?” 

“No,” said Laura, “not always. But I 
shall always be proud and glad, even if I 
do have to miss him all my life. And, of 
course, I can’t help feeling that we may 
hear good news yet. Now — oh, you 
blessed, blessed girl !” 

And the two clung together in a long 
close embrace that said many things to 
both of them, but not a word aloud. 

How good it seemed to have Mother 
Jess and Laura in the house! Every one 
went about with a hopeful face, though, 
after all, not an inch had the veil of silence 
lifted that hung between the Cameron 
farm and the world overseas. Every one, 
Elliott suspected, shared the feeling she 
269 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


had known, the certainty that all would be 
well now Mother Jess was home. It 
was n’t anything in particular that Mother 
Jess said or did that contributed to this 
impression. Just to see her face in a 
room, to touch her hand now and then, to 
hear her voice, merely to know she was in 
the house, seemed enough to give it. 

They all had so much to say to one an- 
other. The returned travelers must tell 
of Sidney, and the Camerons who had 
stayed at home had tales of how they had 
“carried on” in the others’ absence. 
Tongues were very busy, but no one for- 
got those who were n’t there — not for a 
minute. The sense of them lived under- 
neath all the confidences. There were 
confidences en masse , so to speak, and con- 
fidences a deux. Priscilla chattered away 
into her mother’s ear without once stop- 
ping to catch breath, and Bruce had his 
own quiet report to make. Perhaps Bruce 
and Priscilla and the rest said more than 
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HOME-LOVING HEARTS 


Elliott heard, for when Aunt Jessica bade 
her good-night she rested a hand lightly 
on the girl's shoulder. 

“You dear, brave little woman!” she 
said. “All the soldiers are n’t in camp or 
over the seas.” 

Elliott put the words away in her 
memory. They made her feel like a man 
who has just been decorated by his gen- 
eral. 

She felt so comforted and quiet, so free 
from nervousness, that not even the tele- 
phone bell could make her jump. It 
tinkled pretty continuously, too. That 
was because all the next day the neighbors 
who did n’t come in person were calling up 
to inquire for the returned travelers. 
Elliott quite lost the expectation that 
every time the telephone buzzed it meant 
a possible message for her. 

She had lost it so completely that when, 
as they were on the point of sitting down 
at supper, Laura said, “There ’s the tele- 
271 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 


phone again, and my hands are full,” 
Elliott remarked, “I 'll see who it is,” and 
took down the receiver without a thought 
of a cable. 

“This is Elliott Cameron speaking. . . . 
Yes — yes. Elliott Cameron. All ready.” 
A tremor crept into the girl’s voice. “I 
did n’t get that. . . . Just received my 
message? Yes, go on. . . . Repeat, 
please. ... Wait a minute till I call 
some one.” 

She wheeled from the instrument, her 
face alight. “Where’s Bruce? Please, 
somebody, call — oh, here you are!” She 
thrust the receiver into his hands. “Make 
them repeat the message to you. It ’s 
from Father. Pete was a prisoner. 
He ’s escaped and got back to our lines.” 

Then she slipped into Aunt Jessica’s 
waiting arms. 

Supper? Who cared about supper? 
The Camerons forgot it. When they re- 
membered, the steaming-hot creamed 
272 


HOME-LOVING HEARTS 


potato was cold and the salad was wilted, 
but that made no difference. They were 
too excited to know what they were eating. 

To make assurance trebly sure there 
were more messages. Bob cabled of 
Pete’s escape through the Hun lines and 
the government wired from Washington. 
The Camerons’ happiness spilled over into 
blithe exuberance. They laughed and 
danced and sang for very joy. Priscilla 
jigged all over the house like an excited 
brown leaf in a breeze. None of them, 
except Father Bob, Mother Jess, and 
Laura, could keep still. Laura went about 
like a person in a trance, with a strange, 
happy quietness in her ordinarily energetic 
movements and a brightness in her face 
that dazzled. There was no boisterous- 
ness in any one’s rejoicing, only a gen- 
tleness of gaiety that was very wonderful 
to see and feel. 

As for Elliott, she felt as though she 
had come out from underneath a great 
273 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

dark cloud, into a place where she could 
never again be anything but good and 
happy. She had been coming out ever 
since Aunt Jessica reached home, but she 
had n’t come out the same as she went in. 
The Elliott Aunt Jessica and Laura had 
left in charge when they went to Camp 
Devens seemed very, very far away from 
the Elliott whose joy was like wings that 
fairly lifted her feet off the ground. 
Smiles chased one another among her 
dimples in ceaseless procession across her 
face. She did n’t try to discover why she 
felt so different. She didn’t care. The 
dimples, of course, were the very same 
dimples she had always had, and at the 
moment the girl was entirely unconscious 
of their existence, though as a matter of 
fact those dimples had never been busier 
and more bewitching in all Elliott 
Cameron’s life. 

“I suppose,” Mother Jess said at last, 
274 


HOME-LOVING HEARTS 


“we shall have to go to bed, if we are to 
get Stannard off in the morning. ,, 

Going to bed is n’t a very exciting thing 
to do when you are so happy you feel as 
though you might burst with joy, but by 
that time the Camerons had managed to 
work out of the most dangerous stage, and 
inasmuch as Stannard’s was an early 
train, going to bed was the only sensible 
thing to do. So they did it. 

What was more remarkable, the last 
sleepy Cameron straggled down to the 
breakfast-table before the little car ran up 
to the door to take Stannard away. They 
were really sorry to see him go and he 
acted as though he were just as sorry to 
go, which would seem to indicate that 
Stannard, too, had changed in the course 
of the summer. He looked much like the 
long, lazy Stannard who had rebelled 
against a vacation on a farm, but his car- 
riage was better and his figure sturdier, 
275 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

and his hands were n’t half so white and 
gentlemanlike. Underneath his lazy ease 
was a hint of something to depend on in an 
emergency. Perhaps even his laziness 
was n’t so ingrained as it used to be. 

They all went out on the veranda to say 
good-by and waved as long as the car was 
in sight. 

“Sorry you’re not going, too?” Bruce 
asked Elliott. 

“Oh, no ! I would n’t go for anything.” 

“For a girl who did n’t want to come up 
here at all,” he said softly, “you ’re doing 
pretty well. Decided to make the best of 
us, did n’t you?” 

She looked at him indignantly. “In- 
deed, I did n’t ! I would n’t do such a 
thing. Why, I just love it here!” Then 
she saw the twinkle in his eye. “You 
tease!” 

“I ’m going away, myself, next week, 
S. A. T. C. I can’t get any nearer France 
than that, it seems, just yet. Father Bob 
276 


HOME-LOVING HEARTS 

says he can manage all right this winter 
and he has a notion of something new that 
may turn up next spring. He says, ‘Go/ 
and so does Mother Jess. So — I ’m go- 
ing/’ 

Elliott stole a quick glance at the firm, 
clear-cut face, chiseled already in lines of 
purpose and power. 

“I ’m glad,” she said, “but we shall — 
miss you.” 

“Shall you miss me?” 

“Yes.” 

“I ’d hate to think that you would n’t.” 

Elliott always remembered the morning, 
three days later, when Bruce went away. 
How blue the sky was, how clear the sun- 
shine, how glorious the autumn pageant of 
the hills ! Beside the gate a young maple 
burned like a shaft of flame. True, Bruce 
was only going to school now, but there 
was France in the background, a beckon- 
ing possibility with all that it meant of 
triumph and heroism and pain. That idea 
277 


THE CAMERONS OF HIGHBORO 

of France, and the fiery splendor of the 
hills, seemed to invest Bruce’s strong 
young figure with a kind of glory that 
tightened the girl’s throat as she waved 
good-by from the veranda. She was glad 
Bruce was going, even if her throat did 
ache. Aches like that seemed far less im- 
portant than they used to. She waved 
with a thrill coursing up her spine and a 
shy, eager sense of how big and wonderful 
and happy a thing it was to be a girl. 

With a last wave to Bruce turning the 
curve of the road Mother Jess stepped 
back into the house. 

“Come, girls,” she said. “I feel like 
getting very busy, don’t you ?” 

Elliott followed her contentedly. Oth- 
ers might go, but she did n’t wish to, not 
while Father was on the other side of the 
ocean. It made her laugh to think that 
she had ever wished to. That laugh of 
pure mirth and happiness proved the com- 
pleteness of Elliott Cameron’s evacuation. 
278 


HOME-LOVING HEARTS 

“What is the joke?” Laura asked, smil- 
ing at the radiant charm of the dainty fig- 
ure enveloping itself in a blue apron. 

“Oh,” said Elliott lightly, “I was think- 
ing that I used to be a queer girl.” 


THE END 











